Swedish~ Stereo~

Christmas time and Caroline Roosmark shoots with a new wonderful charity calendar full of cebreties musicians (that this blog is basically interested) in quite unexpected images. Can you even guess everyone? Personally I wouldn't guess Moa Lignell, though she's looking incredibly charming. Thorsten Flinck, Lisa Nilsson, Nassim al Fakir and Andreas Lundstedt have also got their special images. Lisa has almost turned to Swedish Monica Bellucci becoming a real fiece of collection. You can buy calendar and watch the rest of photos here (also check some pics of 2012 and 2011 calendars).

Darin is one of those artists we can never get enough in any sort of appearance - on TV, in songwriting credits to songs of other artists and sure in his own new stuff. Thanx God he never makes us waiting too long and after "Lovekiller" album that due to our opinion was one of the most incredible pop-albums of 2010 Darin is already recording new songs with Anders Bagge, Niklas Bergwall and some other songwriters (check more on Poster Girl's blog). One thing looks clear - ballad period is over and Darin turns his face to something completely new, actually Niklas Bergwall? Will ballad-Darin turn to dance-Darin? Ah, who cares - we take it all!
Few days ago Darin has appeared on Channel 5 to perform cover of Lisa Nilsson's "Himlen Runt Hörnet" and trust us it just can't go wrong when Darin makes this sort of intimate piano performance, it's beautiful!

Here is a small weekend treatment for all schlager-crazies.
Magnus Carlsson and Pernilla Wahlgren performed old Pernilla's hit "Svindlande Affärer" on Bingolotto and what can you expect from a couple of Melodifestivalen-veterans? Right, highest concentration of schlageristic energy with all those schlager-poses, singing back to back and 100% perfect vocals.
Nanne took part in current season of Doobidoo and performed Alice Cooper's "Poison" with comic Måns Möller and though vocal is not the strongest Måns' side but still Nanne always brings loads of joy to the stage and together they looked really not bad.
And a little bit bit slowing down tempo - another Doobidoo-duet - gorgeous Lisa Nilsson and Samuel Ljungblahd performed cover of Donny Hathaway and Roberta Flack's "Where Is The Love", it's not schlager but calm soul performance, very enjoyable as both artists are the owners of very beautiful vocals so hope you're gonna like it!

Yesterday Sweden celebrated 33th Birthday of Princess Victoria.
Every year Royal family and a lot of most respectable artists are invited to a big concert devoted to this day. This year was a little exception as Princess after her recent marriage was in her Honeymoon trip but all the rest of the family attended concert in Öland.
Concert was opened by Swedish pop-queen Charlotte Perrelli looking and sounding real fierce with Tina Turner's cover "River Deep Mountain High" and Sofia Karlsson's "Nu är det gott att leva". Another big schlager-name and newlywed Peter Jöback performed his own songs "I Allt Jag Ser", "En sång om oss" and The Divine Comedy's "Absent Friends". Gorgeous pop-diva Lisa Nilsson (who just like Peter was performed this year on the concert devoted to royal wedding) performed songs "I Samma Andetag" and "Himlen Runt Hörnet" which were included in her newly released compilation. Melodifestivalen-winner Martin Stenmarck performed his new single "Everybody's Changing" and "Som En Vän" from the album "I Septemberland". One of the most popular Idol-graduates Amanda Jenssen performed "I Choose You" from her last album. Schlager-veterans were diluted with young schlager-blood of Eric Saade who presented his biggest hit "Manboy". And I should also mention very nice performances of school cello-quartet from Lilla Akademin and fiddler Görgen Antonsson. Check whole concert here.

New season of popular summer TV-show "Lotta på Liseberg" has just started and yesterday public could enjoy first set of this programme with loads of old favorite Swedish hits and some own songs of three brilliant artists invited as guests - Charlotte Perrelli, Lisa Nilsson and Markoolio. In common about the show - it started 6 years ago by popular singer Lotta Engberg and during the show guest-artists make sing-a-long performance coming down to the audience to sing some beloved classics with them (this is what conquering SVT's show "Allsång på Skansen" is also about). Apart from all these stars-karaoke performances schlager-queen Charlotte Perrelli sang her pop-anthem "Hero" and "Summer Nights" (from Grease musical), beautiful Lisa Nilsson performed her old hit "Varje gång jag ser dig" and new song "I samma andetag" (that was released on her recent compilation "20 - En jubileumssamling") and Markoolio provided few of his pretty big hits - "Ingen sommar utan reggae" and "Sommar och sol". Another amazing performance was Schlagerkavalkad when all three artists were singing part of their Melodifestivalen entries - Charlotte - "Tusen och en natt", Lisa - "Du (öppnar min värld)" and Markoolio - "Värsta schlagern" (though it didn't qualify to MF but became very popular however). Next week we'll see Robert Wells, Linda Bengtzing, Joel Alme and Velvet on the stage of Liseberg.

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.

Swedish music lovers keep enjoying by all the music stuff and events currently being held in Stockholm and yesterday everyone could've got a pleasure to watch a great concert in Konserthuset with some top-artists and surprisingly alive responsing audience, Victoria herself was incredibly charming and beautiful, but don't worry if you've missed it, you still can enjoy it here. You can find some really brilliant performances there. For example Sarah Dawn Finer performing her beautiful new single "Kärleksvisan" (Swedish version of song "For A Friend" from her last album), Salem al Fakir with his new devotional song "All Day Love" (that you can download for free on this site if you'll manage to be one of the first 5000) and magical charming performance, Lisa Nilsson with her version of Kent's song "Utan Dina Andetag" (that really loked like my personnal discovery of this artist who seems like a real classics of Swedish music), Peter Jöback with his cover Charles Aznavour's "She", Malena Ernman with some absolutely brilliant performances proving her like a real Goddess of the stage, Roxette with their comeback to a big stage, performance of "The Look" and standing ovations and other performances of Helen Sjöholm, The Real Group, Jazz Divas of Scandinavia (Cæcilie Norby, Silje Nergaard, Rigmor Gustafsson), Lars Cleveman, Magnus Uggla and others. You can check some of these performances below.

Darin's releasing another devotional single "Can't Stop Love" for Victoria's marriage written by Tony Nilsson, very beautiful modern huge ballad that you can listen here, if you like Darin's ballads you should be totally satisfied with this song!

And don't forget to check some performances from Bröllopsstudio, you can enjoy by some amazing covers from EMD, Carola and Fibes, Oh Fibes!