Already when his first album, "Känn ingen sorg för mig Göteborg", was released in 2000, there was talk of the similarities with The Smiths and Morrissey's music.

Two years later, he had to withdraw the single "Kom igen Lena" when the British composer Andrew Lloyd Webber said that the b-side "När jag ser fård" had obvious similarities with his song "Pie Jesus".

One of those who were annoyed by the many references was the Håkan Hellström fan Christian Krig, who in 2004 started the site "Håkan Helstöld".

He and the site's visitors listed Håkan Hellström's text loans together and the site came to contain over a hundred examples of more or less clear references to other artists' songs.

- Partly, I thought it was fun to share the examples I had found.

I was probably also a little annoyed and thought that he could perhaps have been a little more open about which artists he borrowed from, says Christian Krig.

Was contacted by Håkan Hellström

At first only a few people found the site, but after a large site shared the link to "Håkan Helstöld" the number of visitors exploded and the "song thefts" became rewritten in the evening papers and a topic of debate.

- There were very negative discussions.

Partly from Håkan's most die-hard fans who thought I was an idiot and partly there were many who perhaps didn't like Håkan that much who thought it was great that we put "the fake singing sat" there.

And it was never my intention to hurt him.

The debate led to Håkan Hellström contacting Christian and asking him to shut down the site.

- He described how the page had affected him and above all the discussions that took place in the newspapers and then I decided that it wasn't really worth it.

More forgiving approach to loans now

The site was shut down in 2005, but the discussion around Håkan Hellström's references to other music is still ongoing, both on internet forums and in the media, for example in Resumé.  

Christian Krig says that he now has a more forgiving attitude towards Håkan Hellström's loan.

- Then I probably thought that he sat at home and wrote his texts and hoped that no one would discover these loans.

Now I rather think that he probably hoped that someone would find them.