Gyllene Tider is a Swedish pop band. Gyllene Tider means 'Golden Ages' or 'Golden Times' in English. Few Scandinavians have not heard the song "Sommartider", often played on the radio during late spring and early summer. The band is well-known for its catchy choruses and light-weight lyrics. In the text below, the Swedish name of the song is written in italic. Within parenthesis, the English translation is written.
In 1977, Per Gessle met Mats Persson, a member of the band Audiovisuellt Angrepp, forming the duo Grape Rock. Later Micke Andersson, Anders Herrlin and Göran Fritzon joined and the quintet was born. The group's name was changed to Gyllene Tider.
1978 - The band had become a group of local celebrities in Halmstad for their Christmas-concerts. They took advantage of this and released their quite rare vinyl ep; Billy. The record sold in about 900 copies.
In 1979, the LP Gyllene Tider was released, becoming a huge success in Sweden. Flickorna på TV2 (The girls on channel 2) was the biggest hit on that album.
The second album was released in 1981 under the name Moderna Tider (Modern age) and also enjoyed huge success. It was followed up by a national tour. The next year Puls (Pulse) was released with the hits Sommartider (Summertimes) and Flickan i en Cole-Porter-sång (The girl in a Cole Porter song).
The group tried to break through to the American market in 1984 with the album Heartland (a six track mini version of the album The Heartland Café released in Sweden) under the name Roxette. But it failed and the album flopped after selling about 8,000 copies.
In 1985 the group officially broke up. But in the following years a few "Greatest hits" albums were released and a few reunions took place, in particular their immensely popular comeback tour Återtåget in 1996.
