Alexander Bard (born March 17 1961 in Motala) is a Swedish author, songwriter, producer, singer and actor.

In his younger years he worked as a male prostitute in Amsterdam.

He began his music career in the 1980s with the a single "Life in a Goldfish Bowl" released under the name Baard. He later had some minor success as Barbie, which saw Bard in drag singing dance-oriented pop. After abandoning work on a second Barbie album, he formed Army of Lovers with two of Barbie's entourage, Farouk (Jean-Pierre Barda) and Katanga (La Camilla). Army of Lovers had over 20 pan-European hits, the biggest being "Crucified", "Obsession" and "Sexual Revolution", while their presence in the US and the UK was limited to repeated club chart successes. They released five studio albums before Bard disbanded the group to concentrate on his new group Vacuum.

Vacuum consisted of Alexander Bard, Marina Schiptjenko (formerly of synthpop group Page), and newcomer Mattias Lindblom. Their first single "I Breathe" did very well - it was one of the fastest selling singles in Sweden in 1996. Further releases did not do as well, except in Russia and Ukraine, and Bard left after only two albums. Later Bard reformed Army of Lovers briefly for a handful of new tracks and a greatest hits collection, and contributed to the first two Alcazar albums. Since 2005 he has been working and performing with a new band, Bodies Without Organs, with Marina Schiptjenko and new vocalist Martin Rolinski. Their debut album "Prototype" generated seven top 20 hit singles in Scandinavia and reached platinum status.

Besides the groups mentioned above, Alexander Bard has also worked as a songwriter and producer for several Swedish artists, in the early 1990s mainly with Anders Wollbeck and more recently mainly with Anders Hansson. He was a co-founder of Stockholm Records and currently has several internet and music-related businesses. Bard has written two books with Jan Söderqvist , the first called "Nätokraterna" (published in English as Netocracy: The New Power Elite & Life After Capitalism, as well as in other languages) and the second book titled "Det globala imperiet" (currently in translation to English as "The Global Empire") in which he presents his sociological theories on the interactive revolution. A former student of the The Stockholm School of Economics, he has given lectures on the subjects of the books as well as other topics, such as Zoroastrianism. He is a convert to that religion, and is active in that community. On several occasions, Alexander Bard has appeared on public service TV and radio, propagating the use of narcotic substances and a liberalisation of the relatively stringent Swedish drug laws.

Bard is the founder and head of the mailing list Elit, a private forum for Swedish celebrities and journalists. Though it has been covered in media several times during the last 15 years of its existence, it has recently seen extraordinary media attention due to an article in Dagens Nyheter, publicizing correspondence from the list where celebrities use harsh personal attacks against other celebrities and media personalities. The mailing list has been criticized for encouraging the spreading of rumors and intimate gossip about popular celebrities, but has been defended by its participants, who argue that the list is not a public forum and that the few slanderous or insulting examples that have been published in the press are not representative of the discussion as a whole.

External links

• The Shrine - A site dedicated to Bard and his current music project (Bodies Without Organs)
• Bodies Without Organs (BWO)
• The Army of Lovers Network - Army of Lovers fansite
• Army of Lovers - We Are The Universe - Fan website
• www.Bodies-Without-Organs.net
• Mother Virgin // Dominika Peczynsky - Website dedicated to Dominika Peczynski

See also: List of Swedes in music

1961 births | Bisexual musicians | Lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender people | Living people | Swedish songwriters | Zoroastrianism | Melodifestivalen

Alexander Bard | Alexander Bard