Gran Turismo (album)

Gran Turismo is the fourth studio album by Swedish rock band the Cardigans, released internationally on 19 October 1998 and in November 1998 in the United States. It features a darker and more moody type of music, mixed with more electronic sounds.

In an interview in 2009, producer and sound engineer Tore Johansson commented on the dark sound of the record, which sets it apart from the warm, jammy feel of many other recordings made at Tambourine Studios: "It's a very cold and defined recording, no natural reverb or audio curtains: there's not a sound element on that disc which wasn't deliberately put there."

The album and band were nominated for a total of seven awards at the 1999 Grammis—the Swedish equivalent of the Grammy Awards. Gran Turismo sold more than three million copies worldwide.

Background

The album's name is explained by the band in a track on an advanced copy of the album titled "Explain the Title of the Album Gran Turismo": "The title can be interpreted in many ways but I think we only thought of a few ones we liked," Nina says. "We talked about having like Italian or French title and Gran Turismo came up and it sort of felt really good and you know I can think of music sometimes as tourism and traveling. So to me Gran Turismo is sort of the way to describe music sometimes or spending time with music." Peter says, "and I think that also the title suits this very album extremely well because the album is pretty much about trying to find your place in the world. I think sometimes you can always compare living to being a tourist in the world," Nina finishes.

Track listing

Personnel

Peter Svensson – guitar, vocals
Magnus Sveningsson – bass, vocals
Bengt Lagerberg – drums, percussion
Lars-Olof Johansson – keyboards, piano
Nina Persson – lead vocals

Singles

"My Favourite Game" (10 October 1998, No. 14 UK)
"Erase/Rewind" (28 February 1999, No. 7 UK)

| 30

!scope="row"|Danish Albums (Hitlisten)

| 2

! scope="row"|European Albums (Billboard)

| 8

!scope="row"|Irish Albums (IRMA)

| 10

! scope="row"|Japanese Albums (Oricon)

| 19

!scope="row"|Spanish Albums (Promúsicae)

| 35

Year-end charts

{| class="wikitable sortable plainrowheaders" style="text-align:center;"

|+Year-end chart performance for Gran Turismo

!scope="col"|Chart (1998)

!scope="col"|Position

!scope="row"|Swedish Albums (Sverigetopplistan)

|30

!scope="col"|Chart (1999)

!scope="col"|Position

!scope="row"|Belgian Albums (Ultratop Flanders)

|94

!scope="row"|Belgian Albums (Ultratop Wallonia)

|89

!scope="row"|Italian Albums (FIMI)

|46