Harpo

70s

Harpo (born Jan Harpo Torsten Svensson, 5 April 1950, Bandhagen, Stockholm) is a Swedish pop star known under the stage name Harpo. He was popular in Sweden and around Europe in the 1970s and is best known for his worldwide hit Moviestar which also reached number 24 in the UK Singles Chart and number 2 in the Australian Singles Chart in 1976. Harpo has continued to work in the music business, releasing an album of new material as recently as 2005 and continues to tour to this day. He remains popular in Germany and toured there throughout 2007. Harpo started his career in the late 1960s as an actor in children's theatre. While touring around Sweden, he started to write songs. In 1972, he signed a recording contract with Stig Anderson at Polar Music. Anderson assigned him to in-house record producers, Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus. The plan was that Andersson and Ulvaeus would work with Harpo on an album of his children's songs in Swedish. The collaboration did not work out and Anderson released Harpo from his contract. Harpo then signed with EMI and formed a successful creative partnership with producer Bengt Palmers. Harpo released his first two singles in 1973 - Honolulu and Sayonara. Both were hits and reached the Top Ten on the Tio-i-topp chart. Sayonara held the number one spot for five consecutive weeks between January and February 1974. On 27 February 1975, Harpo recorded the song for which he would become most famous - Moviestar. One of the backing vocalists on...