Lars Lönndahl

Biography

Lars Gunnar "Lasse" Lönndahl (Swedish pronunciation: [ˈlǎsːə ˈlø̂nːdɑːl]; 19 August 1928 – 26 December 2022) was a Swedish singer and actor. He was considered the best-known Swedish singer of the 1950s and 1960s with nicknames including "The Swedish Frank Sinatra" and "World's Oldest Teenager". Even though by the mid-1970s his career had slowed down, he was still considered arguably Sweden's most popular singer of all time and was long a very popular figure in media.

Career

Lönndahl was born in Stockholm. His breakthrough was in 1949 with his first record, "Tangokavaljeren", which reached No. 2 in Sweden. After that he became one of the leading faces in popular music, scoring 12 No. 2 hit singles in the 1950s. He also made some movies in the late 1950s.
In the 1960s, he became the first singer to have a No. 1 single on the new Swedish chart Svensktoppen (the most important Swedish chart) with the 1962 single "Midnattstango". It stayed a total of 18 weeks in the charts. Between the years 1962 and 1972 he had 35 songs on the chart, with a total of 37.

Personal life

Lönndahl was born in Stockholm to a Swedish mother and an English father. His father left the family early and Lönndahl rarely saw him. Lönndahl remembers his father as a man who rarely worked and lived off his wife before absconding. After Lönndahl found fame, his father tried reconnecting with his son, asking him for money. Lönndahl however, never connected with his father again as he believed too much time had passed and that his father's appearance came much too late. In late 1970, Lönndahl's seven-year-old daughter Malin and her mother died in a car accident in Los Angeles, California. After the incident, Lönndahl for a period of time went into a self-imposed exile to the United States, eluding the Swedish press. He subsequently returned to Sweden but refused to record new material, claiming it was too "onerous to be Sweden's greatest singer".
Lönndahl died on 26 December 2022, at the age of 94.