The Cardigans - After All...

"After all you were perfectly right. I'm scaring close to insanity."

Album: Emmerdale (debut album)
Genre: Lounge, Downtempo
Album Release: February 18th 1994
Length: 2.56
Producer: Tore Johansson
Vocalist: Nina Persson (age 19)
Label: Trampolene Records

Official Audio


Demo version (from 1993)

Charts, Streams & Sales

Spotify: Over 1.5 million
YouTube Music: Over 250 thousand

Credits

Wrote by band members Peter Svensson and Magnus Sveningsson.
Features a grand piano.

Details

• The same song can be found on international releases of their second album 'Life'. 'Emmerdale was initially only availble in Sweden and Japan so a choice few songs were included on international versions of 'Life'.
  
  
• The song doesn't have any choruses. It's made up of 8 couplets that alternate between ones that start with "after all, you were perfectly right" and ones that start with "and on a night like this". It is the lyrical equivalent of yes this, but that. It's a bittersweet song about someone remembering a relationship that ended badly but had its good parts.

"When we started we were more like just a European or British sounding indie kind of band and we were about to record a single for “Rise & Shine”, the very first single. We needed a b-side and I just had this song, it contains a couple of chords that sound a bit jazzy. The producer at that time, Tore Johansson, he really loved that song. I think I started to write songs from that happening, using these kind of chords and mixing it with the pop melodies.

“After All…” was released as a b-side of our first single and then it was just the way it was written with the guitars and Nina’s vocals.

Then, I think we really loved the song and wanted to have it on the album but maybe put some more production into it. We invited this friend Ivan to play the grand piano and make it sound like this jazz type of ballad." (Peter Svensson)