Song · The Cardigans
“Carnival” by The Cardigans
From the album Life (1995)
“Carnival” by The Cardigans appears on 2 radio countdowns from 2 stations between 1996 and 1999. It was first released in 1995 on the album Life. Its best result is #19 on the WBER Listener Countdown 1996. In the combined RockLists rankings it is the #143 alternative song of 1996 and #7,251 alternative song of all time.
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"Carnival" came out in 1995 as the first single from Life, the second album by Swedish band the Cardigans, and it goes down like candy floss with a bruise underneath. The narrator is sweet on a boy who never answers her, and the carnival she wants to go to with him stays a daydream.
The credits mark a turning point: it was the first Cardigans release to give Nina Persson a writing credit, shared with Peter Svensson and bassist Magnus Sveningsson, the man she would eventually take over from as the band's chief lyricist. The band had been road-testing an early version on their summer tour of 1994 behind the debut, Emmerdale. The single's flip side added a cover of Ozzy Osbourne's "Mr. Crowley", and two years later the song found a bigger audience in Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery.
Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.
RockLists rankings
Alternative & Modern Rock
All Rock Formats
Year-end countdowns
| Year | # | Station | Countdown | of |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1996 | 19 | WBER Rochester, NY | WBER Listener Countdown 1996 | 100 |
All-time and decade countdowns
| Year | # | Station | Countdown | of |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1999 | 939 | Q101 | Q101 Top 1,011 Songs of All-Time (December 1999) | 1017 |
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