Swedish~ Stereo~

New bunch of Melodifestivalen participants is delivered and we check 1-minutes rehearsals of next schlager-heroes of this year.
Youngblood have presented "Manboy"-cousin armed with torches and Thomas Benstem's choreography. Maria BenHajji has brought 203 candles and her upgraded schlager-ballad. Mattias Andréasson from E.M.D. starts his solo-career with American electronic pop-mix of Oscar Linnros r'n'b direction (my absolute favorite of this semifinal by snippets). Love Generation are back with RedOne's marching dance-tune and Alex Sparrow-inspired show from Sacha Jean-Baptiste. Carolina Wallin Pérez has melancholic indie-track, bunch of drummers and butterfly-confetti. Andreas Johnson doesn't break what worked well for him when he has started with "Sing For Me" arena-oriented pop-rock. Molly Sandén's song is Leona Lewis-sounding dramatic ballad that I can't compare with any other song Molly did before but I save my judgments before I'll listen to it in a full version. And finally Swedish writer Björn Ranelid with ex-Caracola Sara Li. I'm not even gonna try to understand that buzz around Björn, I'll be just enjoying Sara Li's lovely bubblegum-part that sounds especially good after Björn's "there-is-such-a-promising-dance-production-so-read-faster-and-let-the-chorus-start" part.

One of the highlights of Friday concert in Kulturhuset was performance of one of Kent's hits "Utan Dina Andetag" ("Without Your Breath") by Lisa Nilsson as very beautiful and emotional ballad that turned to be my personal discovery as before I heard this song only in its initial version. This song has never been released as a single, it wasn't even included in album, just appeared as b-side of single "Om du var här" (1996) and later on compilation "B-sidor 95–00" but became very popular wedding soundtrack around country in it's ballad performance and you can find it on Swedish part of 3CD compilation "Absolute Bröllop" (released this May) being sung by Erik Linder. By the way you can find some other songs that you probably know and like long time like Cecilia Vennersten's "Det Vackraste", Sonja Alden's "För Att Du Finns", Per Gessle's "Tycker Om När Du Tar På Mig", Carola's "När Löven Faller", Suzzie Tapper's "Visst Finns Mirakel", Sara Löfgren's "För Alltid", (classic compillation without classic band???) Abba's "Dancing Queen" and some other beautiful songs.


Back to "Utan Dina Andetag" last week right before the Royal Wedding the song got it's re-birth by Carolina Wallin Pérez singer well-known by her covers of Kent. Cover was initialy released on Carolina's album "Pärlor och Svin" in October 2009, album is actually half-acoustic, half-jazz cover-collection of best Kent's song, very nice relaxing work that you can taste here.