Swedish~ Stereo~

As obvious we keep our hands on pulse of Swedish Idol show and very-very soon you'll get my review of the latest episode but right now I'd like to present new hit-release from Idol.
Not so long ago we've got unplugged compilation of the most successful covers of Idol-participants "Det bästa från Idol 2010 Audition" out and there's possibility that we're gonna get another one soon. I haven't put my hands on this disk yet but due to samples it's gonna be one of the best Idol-compilations so far and it feels like Idol-selection this year contained 100% ready artists (at least sounding perfect in studio). You can see tracklist below.
This week all finalists of Idol (except Alice) performed brand new song "All I Need Is You" written by Andreas Carlsson, Kristian Lundin, Enrique Iglesias and Kalle Engström. It's a charity song in collaboration with UNICEF and it hasn't take more than 1-2 hours to rocket to #1 of Swedish iTunes chart. It's not standard Idol ballad but warm half-acoustic pop-song that people can sing along in a close company next to fireplace and watching whole Idol-family together again undoubtfully was very pleasant. You can check studio version of the song here and also demo with Andreas Carlsson's vocal here.

Music theme "Famous" of TV-show "Made in Sweden" has got a chance to become a real hit in USA as it was borrowed by new Nickelodeon's American series "Big Time Rush" and will be promoted as a single and included in album planned to be released this August.

Sweden can enjoy this song already year since the first season of "Made In Sweden". Swedish Idol juries Anders Bagge, Andreas Carlsson and Laila Bagge being really creative producing team decided to make this new show demonstrating all required work made by producers with some new stars and main faces of the first season were Janet Leon (ex-member of girls band Play) and Kim Fransson. Results of both were quite impressive, Kim's single "3 Floors Down" has reached #1 and the album - #14, Janet's single "Let Go" entered Top-3 and the album surprisingly peaked at the same 14th place. Later Kim has left team of "Made in Sweden" being unsatisfied with management and Janet is currently has some plans to release her album in USA. However first season left this brilliant rock-soundtrack written by Andreas Carlsson and Desmond Child (charted only one week at #56) that was later changed to a more pop-sound for the next season devoted to comeback of band Play with old members Faye Hamlin, Anaïs Lameche and newcomer (but not new person for Swedish audience) Sanne Karlsson who was main vocalist of last E-Type's album replacing Nana Hedin. This time single "Famous" reached #1 and girls' comeback-album "Under My Skin" has entered Top-10 (#7), Play announced "Not The One" as another single but recently performed another song "Trash" from their album at LOVE Stockholm 2010 festival.

Erik Grönwall, the winner of Idol-2009, in a few months after his victory and debut cover-album releases follow-up "Somewhere Between A Rock And A Hard Place". I should mention that first album "Erik Grönwall" held the first place of album-chart around a month that is not weak at all for Swedish Idol's winner and the winning single "Higher" was holding 6 weeks on the first place of single-chart also. Can new album achieve the same success? We will know very soon, album is already in sale and you can taste the pieces of it below. How we could suppose it's a completely rock-album, you won't find here such a modern pop-songs like "Higher" but you'll find a lot of 80s and 90s rock-songs perfectly suiting Erik's voice from set of brilliant songwriters like Joey Tempest (Europe), Sharon Vaughn, Michel Zitron, Max Martin, David Stenmarck, Brian McFadden, Johan Becker, Jörgen Elofsson, Andreas Carlsson, Paul Stanley (Kiss), Epicentre, Nicke Borg (Backyard Babies) and many others. Well, check and judge yourself!