Monroes

Oslo's Monroes got going in 1982 as a duo who had plainly worn out their Madness records: Lage Fosheim singing, Eivind Rølles on guitar, and a nutty ska bounce behind them. EMI took them on, and the debut single, "Sunday People", went all the way to number one in Norway in 1983. That same year the Spellemann awards handed them both artist of the year and pop record of the year.

The skank didn't last, and that turned out to be the making of them. Within a couple of years the checkerboard had given way to something smoother and easier on the ear, melodic pop with every arrangement polished to a gleam, and Fosheim's clean, clear voice, carrying an accent that sounded more British than Scandinavian, sat right in the middle of it. "Cheerio" put them back on top at home in 1985 and even made it onto the American charts, and Face Another Day, the album from that year, keeps turning up whenever critics rank the best pop and rock records Norway has produced.

They made four studio albums in all, the last in 1993, before calling it quits. Both men died of cancer in 2013, and the Rockheim Hall of Fame took them in in 2021. On rock radio it's "What Do All the People Know" that listeners have held on to.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.