Happy Nation Lyrics

Lyric discussion by Psudo 

Cover art for Happy Nation lyrics by Ace of Base

According to Wikipedia, Ulf "Buddha" Ekberg of Ace of Base deeply regrets his earlier affiliation with a Swedish nationalist political party and a white power band. He said of that time, "I really regret what I done. I closed that book. I don't want to even talk about it, that time does not exist in me any more. I closed it and I threw the book away."

In the music video, symbols of Christ, Buddha, the peace symbol, and the Yin/Yang symbol predominate as symbols of what good things should be pursued. A picture of a nuclear explosion accompanies the song's first statement of "Tell them we've gone too far."

There are a few symbols that might be ignorantly assumed to be Satanist, but a more knowledgeable person would recognize them as Buddhist religious symbols. Only by assuming that everything other than Christianity is devilish can you construe these things as Satanist or devil-worshiping.

The lyric "no man's fit to rule the world alone" rejects of the idea of a born leader (such as "The Furor"). The lyrics "dream of (the) perfect man / a situation leading to sweet salvation" reference the Christian concept of a heavenly afterlife and the Buddhist concept of enlightenment; thus, they are advocacy for a self-improving effort towards perfection, not some racist concept of perfection-by-birthright.

I interpret this song to be Ulf's rejection of national socialist views of what makes a "Happy Nation" in favor of traditional, moral, and peaceful terms.

BIG NO. Yes on Ulf rejection on the nationalist party, but this is a general heavy rejection towards ANY ideology... any blind following of whatever faith or ideology is dangerous - it is NOT contrasting "good" and "bad" ideologies but turns against black and white thinking. There is no such things as a happy nation ----> it just means people who are unhappy are beeing ignored or repressed. It is not a positive depiction of faith and not at all embrancing extremly ideological concepts like "self-improvement".