Markus Fagervall & Eskilstuna Boys

Proof, as if any were needed, of what a global phenomenon Simon Fuller and his management company, 19 Entertainment, unleashed with the first season of the U.K. reality series Pop Idol in 2001 came in December 2006 when the third season of the Swedish edition of Pop Idol was won by a 24-year-old singer named Markus Fagervall. Fagervall not only was a complete unknown prior to the series starting, but he was a complete unknown from the impossibly remote village of Overtornea, a town of not quite 2,000 people just above the Arctic Circle on the Finnish border, where the local la...