A*Teens Redefine Teen Spirit

Yes, the four members of the A*Teens know the title of their sophomore album, Teen Spirit, harks back to Nirvana's anthem "Smells Like Teen Spirit" — even if the music couldn't be further from it.

"We've heard that a lot," 16-year-old Dhani Lennevald says of the Nirvana reference. The title, he says, came from A&R man Anders Johansson, and the Swedish quartet heartily approved. "We weren't thinking of [Nirvana]," says Lennevald. "People are like, 'Yeah, do you know that [Nirvana] song, and we're like, 'Yeah, but that has nothing to do with it.'"

Then again, the A*Teens are pretty used to being compared to something. The group broke out last year with The ABBA Generation, a collection of covers of songs by their homeland's greatest pop heroes that sold more than 3 million copies worldwide. For Teen Spirit, however, the A*Teens went after original material, winding up with a collection of 13 pop tunes that bounce from up-tempo to ballads with a couple of stops in reggae and Latin stylings.

"I think we actually found an A*Teens sound," says Lennevald. So what is that? According to Sara Lumholdt, the group's other sweet 16 (Marie Serneholt and Amit Paul are both 17), the key is in the lyrics.

"They're, like, teenager lyrics," she says, "things you can relate to, like school, parties, when you're feeling depressed over a guy you like. But it still has to be fun; even if they're sad songs, we do it positively. We think our fans can look at these songs and relate to them and recognize themselves."

One thing you won't find on Teen Spirit, however, is Max Martin, the Swedish Svengali who's crafted hits for the Backstreet Boys, Britney Spears, and other spirited teen performers. The A*Teens worked instead with the next generation of Swedish über-writer-producers, introducing names such as Fredrik Thomander, Anders Wikstrom, Thomas Jansson, Jan Kask, and Peter Mansson to the pop mainstream.

"We wanted to have as good songs as possible; the name [of the producer] didn't matter," says Lumholdt. "We kind of wanted to bring out new Max Martins. If it goes really well, they have a chance to get big like Max Martin, too."