Sweden has had a long history of music. Many Swedish artists have enjoyed success on the British and American charts and in other English speaking countries including Australia.

1970s: ABBA

In April 1974, Blue Swede went to number-one on the Billboard Hot 100 with their cover of the B. J. Thomas song "Hooked on a Feeling".

That same month, ABBA won the Eurovision Song Contest in Brighton, England, with "Waterloo". It was a big success throughout Europe, and reached number six on the Billboard Hot 100. Over the next few years ABBA had 18 consecutive top ten hits in the UK, nine of them reaching number one. Having sold an estimated 370 million units worldwide, ABBA became the best-selling band of the 1970s. In 1977, "Dancing Queen" became ABBA's only number one hit on the Billboard Hot 100. ABBA and Led Zeppelin are the only acts to have had 8 consecutive UK #1 albums.

Shortly after the release of their seventh album Super Trouper (1980), Benny Andersson and Anni-Frid Lyngstad of ABBA decided to end their marriage, just as Björn Ulvaeus and Agnetha Fältskog had done two years prior. This event did not stop the foursome from working together. ABBA's eighth album The Visitors was released in November 1981. Feeling that the energy was running out of the group, they decided to take a break in 1982; the band members have not reunited since. Fältskog and Lyngstad then both pursued solo careers. In 1982, Lyngstad released her first solo album in English, the Phil Collins produced Something's Going On. This was followed with the album Shine in 1984. Fältskog recorded three English solo albums during the 1980s, Wrap Your Arms Around Me (1983); Eyes of a Woman (1985), and I Stand Alone (1987). After a 17-year hiatus, Fältskog released My Colouring Book (2004), an album of 1960s cover versions. Her latest album A (2013) has been one of her most successful, earning her Platinum status in Sweden and Gold status in the UK, Germany and Australia.

The term popular music belongs to a number of musical genres "having wide appeal" and typically distributed to large audiences through the music industry. These forms and styles can be enjoyed and performed by people with little or no musical training. It stands in contrast to both art music and traditional music. Art music was historically disseminated through the performances of written music, although since the beginning of the recording industry, it is also disseminated through recordings. Traditional music forms such as early blues songs or hymns were passed orally, or to smaller, local audiences. The original application of the term is to music of the 1880s Tin Pan Alley period in the United States. Although popular music sometimes is known as "pop music", the two terms are not interchangeable. Popular music is a generic term for music of all ages that appeals to popular tastes, whereas pop music usually refers to a specific musical genre within popular music. The song structure of popular music commonly involves the verse, chorus or refrain, and bridge as the different sections within a piece. With digital access to music, some popular music forms have become global, while others are have wide appeal within the culture of origin. Through hybridity, or mixture across musical genres, new popular music forms are able to be manufactured to reflect the ideals of a global culture. The examples of the African continent, Indonesia, and the Middle East explain how hybridity can develop into new forms of popular music.

Popular Music (Swedish: Populärmusik från Vittula) is a 2004 Swedish comedy film based on the novel of the same name by Mikael Niemi.

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Popular Music from Vittula (Swedish: Populärmusik från Vittula) is a novel by Mikael Niemi. It was published in Sweden in 2000, the English translation by Laurie Thompson followed in 2003. A film based on the book was released in 2004.