Photo & © Tove Floss
Tidningen Vi 2022-10-26
By: KRISTINA LINDH
They were born at the same BB the days after each other and soon became pair horses in music. But when one of them got the dream role in Kristina from Duvemåla, their collaboration ended in a crash. Now Helen Sjöholm and Anna Stadling have found their way back to each other.
Maybe you don’t need to have complicated parts in every song? The question comes from themselves and is a consequence of the new project – a Christmas record where classic earrings are mixed with newly written material.
The question is recent, but alludes to a past when Helen Sjöholm and Anna Stadling were teenagers who sang in their own duo, led by Sundsvall’s choir director, Kjell Lönnå.
The audience was treated to intricate timbres.
Thirty-five years later, they have a simpler sound.
Recently, Anna Stadling and Helen Sjöholm listened to an old cassette recording. They laughed heartily at the girls from before. So hard they worked, both in small talk and vocal art.
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She has six albums behind her since her debut in 1999, as well as collaborations with Lars Winnerbäck and Staffan Hellstrand. Anna Stadling’s song När allt det här är över (When all this is over) became the soundtrack of many Swedes during the pandemic. Among other things, it was the one who brought them together again after all these years. In December 2020, Helen Sjöholm and Anna Stadling performed the song on live television.
Helen Sjöholm needs, as the name suggests, no further introduction.
From the beginning it was the opposite. In Sundsvall of the 80s, Anna Stadling had the clearer capital. The father was a local musical celebrity, she herself went to music high school.
Helen Sjöholm reproduces the tones.
– My parents just: “Oh, the Stadling family and their musicality! And Anna with her high notes!”. There was a lot of respect for what you brought.
In junior high school, the girls ended up in a parallel class. They started watching movies, talking, hanging out and singing. Soon the dreams came.
Helen: Dreams grow in the trust that arises when you feel that there is someone else who has the same thoughts. So it was for us.
Anna: We both felt that the other has the same driving force. That’s what made us work so well.
One of you longed for the theater. The other fantasized about a rock career. Despite that, you were able to meet and encourage each other in a joint expression.
Helen: I remember when you made your own composition of Alf Henrikson’s Juninatten (June Night). You brought it to a rehearsal, a little embarrassed, thinking it was just a school thing. Sven (the duo’s pianist, editor’s note) was delighted and wrote an arrangement. I felt so proud when we sang it in front of an audience. Even then you could create from within yourself.
Anna: I´ve so many pictures from our collaboration. How we made Time after time in a translation by Kristina Lugn. And Deep in my head with a wonderful text by Barbro Lindgren. The song is about the cycles of life.
Helen: We sang it when your mother turned 50.
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Helen: I sang it on the phone for you on your 50th birthday. And thought of it now when our mothers turn 80. That lyrics will always live so hard inside you.
When you were both 25 years old, you, Helen, got the title role of Kristina in the musical Kristina from Duvemåla. Did you then understand what that would mean?
Anna: I can recall the moment at any time. I was standing on Roslagsgatan when you called and told me. I thought, “Now it’s happening for Helen.”
Helen: I understood the moment I got the role that this is “it”. That this is my chance. And that, if it works, it will be my life.
Two musical best friends, overnight one of them becomes nationally famous. Relationships can fall apart for less. How was your friendship affected?
Anna: I could be jealous when I saw how the red carpet was rolled out for you. I have never been part of a production where other people fix things, but have worked so hard myself. A few years ago, I would have thought that a collaboration like the one we have now would have been difficult. It had felt like you kind of picked me up by grace.
Helen: I felt “God, what am I getting into!”, and hardly dared to tell you. Over the years I have learned that you can feel alone in a production too, in your performance and in everything you have to live up to. That we stopped making music was due to an unspoken crash. I think you felt like you were a guest in my world, and you didn’t want that. We had to pause.
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What happens to the relationship and the expression now that you meet to make music after long careers in each direction? Is the comparison gone?
Helen: I come with a singing style that is required when singing to 1,500 people in a large venue. I don’t want to be there all the time but also be able to step back. Over the years I’ve sometimes envied that cool expression you have, Anna. I have a more dramatic tone. By singing with you, I have been able to search for new expressions. Its a challenge.
Anna: The beauty of long collaborations is the experience you have together. You don’t intrude on the other’s area, but at the same time you can be part of it. Imagine having a band since you were fifteen, like U2! Helen is my band. My audience gets to discover her in a new way, and her audience gets to discover me.
Helen: There is also a kind of surprise now. We both discover how much we have developed over the years. I have not kept up with who you are as a professional, but partly had my inner image of that teenager I sang with in Sundsvall.
Anna: We absolutely compare ourselves. At the same time, it encourages us to bring out the best we can in ourselves and each other. I have not experienced that so clearly with any other woman, professionally. As women, we get more questions about competition, even though it is something that exists between both men and women. Male artists would never tell you that there is measure of jealousy in the relationship. If female artists don’t talk about it, they are perceived as being lied to.
Helen: I think we thought early on that our differences would rather push than split our friendship. Like when we were sixteen and my parents were so impressed by you. Then your father came and highlighted my subtitling and my staging. Even then we saw each other as a sounding board.
Almost seven years ago, you, Anna, got breast cancer, something that you have been public about and that has left an impression on your music. How did it affect you, Helen?
Helen: It’s hard to see a friend so fragile and vulnerable. No matter how close you are, you cannot be with us all the way. At the same time, I felt how the relationship strengthened, as tough situations often do.
Anna: There is one particular occasion that we usually talk about. I had just had surgery, you and another friend came for breakfast the next day. It was a very special moment.
Close friendships can look different. Sometimes it´s symbiotic. Sometimes it´s more sporadic in contact, although it´s deep. How has it been for you?
Helen: We never had a symbiosis. For example, we have never traveled together. Our journey has been our communication. I like to feel free.
Anna: We both depend on our own gaming rooms. When we go by car after a performance, we can sit in silence for a long time. I remember when I was little and a girl friend said “It’s just you and me, Anna”. My whole self protested inside. At the same time, it´s important as friends to communicate about your life, to say: “this is all around me now”.
Helen: You need to be really interested in each other, you’ve always been so good at that, Anna. Even in friendships, it´s important to say that “you are important to me”.
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(The entire interview is not reproduced for copyright reasons)