While Ace.of.Base were in New York last month they recorded a promotional preview of The Golden Ratio album at Sirius Radio.  All the songs from The Golden Ratio were played with members of the band saying something about the songs before hand.  One interesting fact is that they were considering calling the album Black Sea, but decided not to because of the Oil Spill there.

A new song was also played – All Night Long.  Acers have known about this song for a while, as one of the songs that didn’t make the cut for the album.  Perhaps we will see it in future release.

(Short clip of “All For You” plays)
Male announcer: Ace of Base, Sweden’s international multi-platinum selling artists are back for another Sirius XM exclusive, on The Pulse.
Female announcer: The North American premiere of the latest Ace of Base album, The Golden Ratio, on The Pulse. Here’s Ulf and Jonas.
(background clip of All That She Wants pulsing beat plays)
Ulf: Hi everyone. You’re here with Ace of Base on Sirius XM and we are going through our new album, The Golden Ratio, track by track. The first song on the album is called All For You, and it was one of the last songs we wrote for the album. It was a song we felt we needed: one more dance track, and we tried to bring back the early nineties to 2010. It was a lot of experimenting with the synthesizers and it’s a cool track. It’s a love song and we made a beautiful video for it.
Jonas: A bittersweet love song, you know, thinking back to Paris.
Ulf: And this is the first single in Europe. We’ll see about the States.
(All For You plays)
Ulf: Hi, I’m Ulf.
Jonas: I’m Jonas.
Clara: I’m Clara.
Julia: I’m Julia.
All four: And we are Ace of Base
Clara: That was the single, All For You, and the second track is called Blah Blah Blah. Ulf, why don’t you tell us about Blah Blah Blah?
Ulf: Well, the second track on the album, Blah Blah Blah on the Radio, we had a few different versions on it. We had a little interesting discussion in Europe with our record company about the lyrics and they were not so sure if radio would appreciate the lyrics, ‘blah blah blah on the radio’. So we did a couple of different versions on it. We did ‘Let it Play on the Radio’, we did ‘Blah Blah Blah, Everywhere I Go’, we did a lot of different versions. But in the end of the day, we realized that Blah Blah Blah On the Radio has the strongest ‘hook’ in it. Of course it was quite interesting to see that Kesha came out with a song called ‘Blah Blah Blah’, at kind of the same time we were planning to release our first single, which could have been ‘Blah Blah Blah’. She didn’t really have a big hit in Europe, but I believe she was #1 in both the U.S. and Canada. Of course, that was a little confusing for a little while, but I think we are quite happy we decided to keep the original lyrics for this track, so here you go.
(Blah Blah Blah plays)
Clara(?): We’re Ace of Base, and that was ‘Blah Blah Blah’.
Ulf: And our next track on the album, which is playing for you, is called The Golden Ratio, and that’s actually the name of the whole album. It was the last song we wrote for the album. We did it like a month after ‘All For You’. We thought we were finished with the album, but we got so inspired of the result of writing ‘All For You’, so we decided to do one more track. This is another dance track, very electronic, very synth-inspired. I think very Ace of Base-ish, but with kind of a cool, modern style to it.
Clara(?): Yeah.
Jonas: Because a ratio is… if you’ve seen the film The DaVinci Code, it’s kind of the line-ear [linear] perfectionist you would say or something. It’s the beauty in things: Mona Lisa, how her…
Julia(?): Smile
Jonas: How she smiles, and old Greek buildings’ proportions, so that is The Golden Ratio, and we are very happy with the album so…
Clara(?): The Golden Ratio in life.
Jonas: Yeah. So here comes ‘The Golden Ratio’.
(The Golden Ratio plays)
They introduce themselves again
Clara: That was The Golden Rachio, and now we’re going to play our fourth track on the album, and that’s ‘Southern California’. So Ulf, what can you tale [sic] about ‘Southern California’?
Ulf: Well, it’s very hot in southern California.
Clara: Very hot *laughs*
everyone talking at once
Clara(?): I wanna be there…
Ulf: It’s a way for us cold Swedes to dream a way of some… a better life…
Clara: I’m actually hoping that one will be the second single so we can go there and do the video there. *laughs*
Ulf: I think this is… ‘Southern California’ shows a little different side of Ace of Base that we’ve never seen, well, shown before. We’ve never really seen before. It’s a bit more of a mature sound…
Jonas: Pop-rock.
Ulf: Pop-rock-y. And I think… Well, some people think this is the… some people have this as their favorite on the album, and it’s a cool song. I think it works pretty well on the radio as well, and it’s nice to… be able to show that we have grown up a little bit. So this is ‘Southern California’.
(Southern California is played)
Ulf: So we [sic] back, you’re here with Ace of Base, and we’re playing our new album, The Golden Ratio. Next…
Clara: That was ‘Southern California’.
Ulf: And this is actually a brilliant song to perform live with. Next song on the album, it’s about Brazil and our nice experiences down there. It’s about an island called Santa Catalina in the south of Brazil. It was a very difficult song to find the sound to, and only a month before we finished the album, we decided not to have this song on the album because we couldn’t find the…
Jonas: The production
Clara(?): Yeah.
Ulf: The production. We tried, we tried for two years and we thought it was too good of a song… not having the perfect production around it. So it was, I would say, last-second before we had to close the door to this album. So we’re very happy we’ve made it.
Julia(?): This song has a real Ace of Base sound to it. Hey, so this is, ‘I Told My Ma’.
(Told My Ma plays)
Ulf: Ok, we are back, we are here with Ace of Base, we are playing our new album, The Golden Rachio. Ok, so we have been playing five songs now, track number six is a song called ‘Black Sea’. We were discussing to have this as the album title, but unfortunately we had this horrible disaster in the gulf so we decided it was not a good idea to have the… name the album ‘Black Sea’. So that kind of scrapped that idea quite quickly. It’s pretty deep lyrics.
Jonas: The lyrics on this one… it’s kind of funny. We didn’t have any paper. We were searching like crazy to find paper. We had to get like a paper box or something (makes ripping sound and laughs). All that…
Clara and Julia: Uh-huh. Yeah.
Ulf: [something]… on hands, and I think we had a lyric on the table as well. So this is Black Sea.
(Black Sea plays)
They introduce themselves
Clara: Well, that was Black Sea. And now you’re going to hear our seventh track on the album, and that song is called One Day.
Jonas: Una dia.
Clara: (laughs)
Ulf: One Day’s probably the chorus which sticks the most, of all the choruses…
Jonas: I had the chorus two weeks in a row in my head. Two weeks!
Clara: It’s stuck in your head.
Jonas: That’s really bad, actually. Ooh… *laughs* Now it’s gone.
Ulf: So it’s kind of a… very annoying song, in that way. It’s like getting chewing gum under your shoe, you know, you can’t get rid of every bit of it. It’s kind of a… little bit of a signature of Ace of Base as well. It’s like the melodies just get stuck. It’s quite irritating when you write a song and you can’t get it out of your own head for a long time. But One Day was one of the early songs as well, we wrote. And think it reminds you listeners, and especially it reminds us, a little bit on the first album. A kind of reggae tune, very typical Ace of Base-ish. So this is One Day.
(One Day plays)
Ulf: Ok, that was One Day. And we are Ace of Base.
(they introduce themselves)
Ulf: …and we are presenting our new album, The Golden Ratio, for you. Song #8 on the track is a song called Juliet. It’s the only ballad we have on this album. We’re not really famous for doing ballads, but this fits very well on the album. We have, on live performances, we’ve done ‘Don’t Turn Around’ as a ballad, so we have now two ballads out of I’m not sure how many songs, but it’s not that many ballads.
Clara and Julia laugh
Ulf: But I think it suits the girls’ vocals very well. And it’s a very beautiful song.
(Juliet is played)
Clara: Well, that was Juliet, and I’m Clara from Ace of Base. I’m here with my wonderful band-members.
(they introduce themselves)
Ulf: … and we’re playing you all of the songs from our new album, The Golden Ratio. We’re now down to track #9. This song is called Precious. It was quite funny when saw ‘Precious’, the movie, they had nothing to do with each other, and we wrote Precious long before we saw the movie, but actually the lyrics fit pretty well into that movie, it’s kind of… And ‘love is precious when it dies’, it kind of…
Jonas: We had bad timing, you could say.
Ulf: No, but that was… I think it was quite good timing.
Jonas: I mean for the movie.
Ulf: Yeah.
Jonas: We couldn’t have that song in the movie.
Ulf: We were a little too late, though, with that. But it was nice. So when we saw the movie, it was really a special, emotional, special emotions for it. So this track is probably the, well, one out of two really super Ace of Base-ish sound, that really sounds like the old Ace of Base 1993, and we didn’t try to mix it with any new stuff. It was on purpose, made. So we really wanted the 1993 sound on this. so enjoy. This is Precious.
(Precious plays, and it sounds extremely good on my TV’s sound system)
Julia: That was Precious. I’m Julia from Ace of Base.
(they introduce themselves)
Ulf: So, we’re here to present the full album, which is called ‘The Golden Ratio’. It’s coming out now. And the next song on the album is a song which is called ‘Vision in Blue’ and this was the first track we worked on this album. And we had a couple of choruses, it’s about an island, also, second song with an island theme, and this is a little bit about the craziness, let everything free in your life, just… be yourself and don’t think too much.
Jonas: Full Moon party.
Ulf: Full Moon party, yes. It’s definitely a party song. But this, together with Black Sea, was very important landmarks for us because it took us two years to experiment with the sound of the new album, and these two songs really made it click, to what we wanted it to sound like in 2010. So, this is not only one of my favorite tracks, it’s a quite cool track…
Julia: Yeah, one of mine, too.
Ulf: Vision in Blue…
(Vision in Blue plays)
Clara: That was Wision in Blue [sic], and I’m Clara from Ace of Base.
Jonas: I’m Jonas.
Ulf: I’m Ulf.
Julia: I’m Julia. Hi.
(sounds like she’s waving)
Ulf: …and we’re here to present the new album called The Golden Ratio, coming out now. We’ve played a few songs for you already. The next song, track #11, is called Mr. Replay, and this is really going back to the roots. We did it on purpose. Very recognizable Ace of Base sound. It’s the only song on the album we have a featuring artist. It’s…
Jonas: Totally unknown, but…
Ulf: It’s a guy from Stockholm. Good singer.
Jonas: A guy from Aland(?) came to us, with a good verse he had already. And we really liked how he sounded. And we kept it. And if you see it as a whole album, it’s very nice to have a different voice sometimes, otherwise you get kind of bored.
Clara: Yeah, so he’s also featuring on it.
Ulf: We’ve been a little bit open, also, to… there’s been some other artists who are interested in featuring on this song, so let’s see. We may do a couple of different versions on this song. So this called Mr. Replay.
(Mr. Replay plays)
Ulf: So that was Mr. Replay. We are Ace of Base.
(they introduce themselves)
Ulf: We’re here to play you the new album, The Golden Ratio. So we are almost through. We are down to track #12. And this track is kind of a slow song. It’s a full acoustic song, and it’s called Who Am I. We thought originally this would be a track with a guy and a girl singing to each other. But we ended up not doing that.
Jonas: Actually, this is the first song on the album we did.
Julia: First one you wrote.
Jonas: This is from ’92 or something.
Ulf: Yeah.
Jonas: Yeah. Not the lyrics, though, but the…
Ulf: The melodies.
Jonas: The melodies. This is a very old track.
Ulf: It was almost coming up on… this was supposed to be on the first album., originally. So this is Who Am I.
(Who Am I is played)
They introduce themselves, Julia first.
Ulf: We’re here to present our new album, The Golden Ratio, just coming out now. So, we played you almost the whole album. We have one more track. It’s called Doreen.
Julia(?) It’s my favorite, actually.
Jonas: Is it?
Julia(?): Yeah! It’s one of my favorites, I think. Yeah. It’s a really cool song. The lyrics.
Ulf: And it’s about saying goodbye, but not knowing you’re saying goodbye, to somebody for the last time. And when you’re realizing that, and thinking about the memories and the positive things that person had given to you in life. We had all these songs on the album, and we had several different versions. I mean, some songs even had 40 different versions, but in the end, we had to decide what track and what version to be on the album, and Doreen had two different versions that were so good, it was extremely difficult to choose what version to have on the album. But it ended to be the little bit more electronic version. So this is a little bit more dance-y.
(Doreen is played)
Ulf: Hi there. That’s Doreen from our new album, The Golden Ratio.
They introduce themselves.
Ulf: The last song we’re gonna play for you is a bonus track on the album. It’s called All Night Long.
(Jonas and the girls laugh)
Ulf: It’s actually the continuing version of All That She Wants. It’s actually the girl who is singing about, in All That She Wants, is actually singing this song. So this is all That She Wants, part II. It’s quite cool lyrics on this one.
Julia: and we’re going to play this one ‘all night long’. *laughs*
Clara: Yeah.
Julia: So this is All Night Long.
(They play the bonus track All Night Long)