One of the first Swedish musical exports to the rest of Europe, pop singer Siw Gunnel Margareta Malmkvist (December 31, 1936), simply known as Siw Malmkvist, enjoyed great popularity in both her native country and Germany during the 1960s. Throughout her decades-spanning career, she maintained a regular presence on the Swedish charts and recorded over 600 songs in different languages. Born in the town of Landskrona, she was the youngest of eight siblings and began singing with local orchestras when she was just a teenager. After winning a talent show in 1955, the 18-year-old Siw Malmkvist was hired as a singer by jazz musician Arne Domnérus and recorded her first single “Tweedle Dee” later that year. As her singing career took off, she joined Metronome’s roster in 1958 and even hosted the incredibly popular TV show Stora Famnen in 1959. That same year, she also won the Melodifestivalen with the song “Augustin,” which was later released as a single and entered the Top 5 of the Sverigetopplistan, and forayed into the German market with the Top 5 hit “Danke für die Blumen.” The new decade found Siw Malmkvist reaching the apex of fame in Sweden with the single “Tunna Skivor,” a version of Connie Francis’ “Everybody’s Somebody’s Fool” that soared to the top of the domestic charts in 1960, followed by an appearance in the Eurovision Song Contest with the song “Alla andra får varann.” Four years later, she scored her first Number 1 in Germany with “Liebeskummer lohnt sich nicht” and her duet with Italian singer Umberto Marcato, "Sole Sole Sole," became the first Billboard Hot 100 entry by a Swedish artist. In the subsequent decades, Siw Malmkvist continued performing both as a singer and actress in several stage plays, musicals, and films and was inducted into the Swedish Music Hall of Fame in 2016.
