My Favourite Game

The song's harmonic strength lies in contrast rather than complexity. The same chord set sounds frantic in the verse and crushing in the chorus purely because of the half-time drum switch — a production decision, not a harmonic one. Staying in natural minor throughout, with no raised seventh and no borrowed chords, the ♭VI and ♭VII give the riff a grinding, slightly directionless quality that fits the lyric's theme of an unbreakable bad habit.

Peter Svensson and Nina Persson wrote 'My Favourite Game' during the Gran Turismo recording sessions between May and July 1998. Persson began with the chorus — a passage she felt 'married the music so quickly that you couldn't tear them apart' — then built verses around it to give the hook context, cramming in more lyrics than on earlier, sparser Cardigans songs. The track initially took shape as a slow country/rock shuffle reminiscent of Neil Young's 'Old Man', but producer Tore Johansson pushed the band to double the tempo. That shift unlocked the song's distinctive guitar hook, which Svensson developed soon after.

Released as the lead single from Gran Turismo in September 1998, 'My Favourite Game' marked a sharp turn away from The Cardigans' earlier bossa-pop toward a harder, fuzz-driven alternative rock. Built around the futile impulse to fix a partner rather than leave them, it reached number one in Greece and number 14 in the UK. Its Jonas Åkerlund-directed video — featuring Persson joyriding on a desert road — was censored for its car-crash imagery and had to be recut for broadcast.