Sofia Karlsson

Folksingers don't usually make best-selling albums, but Sweden's Sofia Karlsson is an exception. Her breakthrough disc, Svarta Ballader (Black Ballads), sold a staggering 60,000 copies -- a huge amount for her homeland -- and brought her the Swedish equivalent of a Grammy. What made it especially remarkable is the fact that the songs were interpretations of poems by the Swedish poet Dan Andersson, hardly material with mass appeal. But Karlsson has always had her quirks. Born in Stockholm in 1975, her grandparents were her initial influences, with her grandfather playing accord...