The Bridge

Ace of Base’s second album, The Bridge was composed during 1994 and 1995 and released on Nov 21, 1995.

It is the only Ace of Base album to contain tracks written, produced and sung by all four of the band’s members, who each had an equal part in its creation.  Earlier recordings featured arrangements and music by Ulf Ekberg and Jonas Berggren with vocals by all members. Later recordings utilized vocals by only Linn Berggren and Jenny Berggren.

On January 1, 1994, The Sign album and single hit #1 on the Billboard Hot 100. Inspired by the band’s success, Jonas penned the first song of what would become The Bridge while on holiday in the Canary Islands. The song was Beautiful Life. Jonas hoped to incorporate gospel elements into the song, which was composed retaining the band’s original club-friendly beat.

The band was still promoting their previous album and so work on The Bridge was infrequent during much of 1994. Jonas and Ulf each composed (separately) a half-dozen songs. Jonas’ songs were recorded mainly at Cheiron Studios in Stockholm, while Ulf’s tracks were created at Tuff Studios in Gothenburg. For the first time, Jenny and Linn also composed and produced songs. Their tracks were recorded mainly at Tuff Studios.  Ulf continued to work with John Ballard and StoneStream (Björn Stenstrom). In Stockholm, Jonas worked with producers Max Martin and Denniz Pop and vocalist Jeanette Söderholm.

The Bridge is certified double Platinum in the USA. Six million copies of the album were sold worldwide. However, this was a far cry from the 23 million copies of the band’s previous album, Happy Nation / The Sign.  The singles from the album found extremely varied levels of success. While “Beautiful Life” became a #1 club hit in the U.S., and reached #15 on Billboard’s Hot 100 singles charts, the release of “Never Gonna Say I’m Sorry” in August of 1996 was given no promotion and peaked just outside the official U.S. Billboard Hot 100.

Buy this album!
The full version of “The Bridge” (including “You and I”) was released  on iTunes in 2007.

1 – Beautiful life 2 – Never gonna say I’m sorry 3 – Lucky love 4 – Edge of heaven 5 – Strange ways 6 – Ravine 7 – Perfect world 8 – Angel eyes 9 – Whispers in blindness 10 – My déjà vu 11 – You and I 12 – Wave wet sand 13 – Que sera 14 – Just ‘n’ image 15 – Lucky love (acoustic version) 16 – Experience pearls 17 – Blooming 18

Differences in versions:

Lucky Love (original) and You & I were not included in UK version and American versions..

My Deja Vu and Strange Ways sound a little bit different, especially in the beggining and in the background vocals.