Photo Credit: Gianluca199063 / CC by 3.0
EDM Powerhouse group Swedish House Mafia has dropped a new single after nearly ten years.
The trio of Sebastian Ingrosso, Steve Angello, and Axwell debuted “It Gets Better” today. It’s one of their unreleased songs the group played frequently on their comeback tour. The group also says it plans to release its debut album, Paradise Again, later this year.
“It was just like, ‘What the f–k do we do? How do we come back? Do we just give them another [version of] what we’ve done before?” Ingrosso says in an interview with Billboard. “I was like f–k that; it’s depressing to go back. It’s disgusting to go back.”
“We have no idea if people are going to like [the new music], but we are just really proud of what we have done.”
Fans of Swedish House Mafia seem to be divided on the new sound. The YouTube comments are full of people spamming fire emojis, while others are asking ‘what happened?’ The debut album is likely to be just as divisive if it doesn’t feature the original sound that made the group popular.
Swedish House Mafia set the tone for the modern EDM scene. They sold out Madison Square Garden twice, with the first appearance selling out in just nine minutes. SHM gained mass popularity as fans began attending mega-festivals like Ultra and Electric Daisy Carnival. All of that success was built on the back of a six-track two compilation catalog. The group’s last song, “Don’t You Worry Child,” released in 2012.
The group later closed out Ultra’s 20th anniversary festival in Miami, with many fans hoping for the Swedes to reunite.
But as Billboard describes, the group was working against itself. “Over the next three years, they made attempts at new music but were derailed at every turn – fighting their own well-known perfectionism, changing managers twice and ultimately leaving the label, Columbia Records, that signed them when they had only bits and pieces of new music.”
The dance music scene has evolved since the 2010s, when the Swedes had their early success. The global dance music industry accounts for just 3.6% of global market share, according to a 2021 IMS analysis of Spotify’s top 200 genres. In fact, dance music seems to be declining in popularity across the globe.
“I’m not trying to like, satisfy the digital market,” says Angello. “My big play here is making an album we love and putting it out. I’m not going to go into the studio and call the guys and be like, ‘yo, the numbers are cold on the playlist.’ We don’t give a f–k.”