Swedish indie band The Cardigans have been quiet for some time – they last released an album back in 2005. But they’re playing some comeback gigs this summer and singer Nina Persson has been talking to the Guardian about one curious aspect of their career: their penchant for Black Sabbath covers.
They did two, in fact. Sabbath Bloody Sabbath on their 1995 breakthrough album Life, and Iron Man on the follow-up, First Band On The Moon. Why asked why they chose to cover Sabbath, Persson explained: “We were big fans – for a heavy band there’s a real pop sentiment in the songwriting – and I think it’s interesting when a cover is a stretch away from your natural sound. As a woman, I thought singing a song done by very manly men gave it a wonderfully creepy aspect.”
“Ozzy (Osbourne) came to see us in Los Angeles and said it was the creepiest thing he’d ever heard, which coming from him is the biggest compliment.”
And they weren’t the end of The Cardigans’ dabblings in the world of hard rock. They covered another Ozzy song – his Blizzard Of Ozz single Mr Crowley - and Thin Lizzy’s The Boys Are Back In Town as B-sides in the mid-1990s.
Persson also talked about her experience with dealing with cervical cancer in the Noughties.” Until I was around 30, I’d hardly ever had a cold, so it was really weird at that age to face something with a possibly deathly outcome. My cancer was operable – I didn’t have to deal with chemo and stuff or get very very ill.”
“I think the consolation prize for any kind of suffering is that you can appreciate things – art, for example – in a different way. You realise these things can happen to anyone. I’ve had 15 or 20 years of thinking ‘I’ve beaten cancer’ but now I’m over 50 I’m thinking: it can totally happen to me again.
The singer said back in 2023 that the Cardigans wouldn’t add to their catalogue, but Persson did mention it may be a possibility once more. “We have logistics issues – families, day jobs – but do toy with the idea of making new music, whether as the Cardigans or in a different form. We’re all capable of making great music, and lately it’s been inspiring to see people like Suede from the 90s making new material. It’s not cringey middle-aged dudes looking hard in leather jackets,” she insisted. “It’s really good stuff.”
