Swedish~ Stereo~

Next week we're gonna have the latest Moraeus med mera show of this year with Agnes but today we had not any less star of Swedish pop - Loreen who along with Loa Falkman, Mando Diao and Maskinen visited Kalle Moraeus. You know how beautiful Loreen can sound in acoustic and we didn't see her doing acoustic quite long, so here it is, her beautiful folky versions of "Euphoria" and "If She's The One"

Annual event Världens Barn is back with a bunch of top pop-artists, fresh names and some new music pop-stuff premiered.
Today we've got Sarah Dawn Finer presenting song "Tårar blir till guld" from new album received pretty well by both critics and iTunes audience. Jill Johnson and Pernilla Andersson were also promoting singles from newest albums. Mando Diao has gone Swedish, Peter Jöback has gone musical. We've got a bit of dansband with Wizex, a bit of summer energy with Panetoz and Nova Delai with Andreas Moe as a fresh blood of Swedish pop. Very-very pleasant concert!

Pretty unexpected Christmas single from Mando Diao "Christmas Could Have Been Good" have become one of the most beautiful Christmas songs released in Sweden this year (and maybe not only this year).
Currently band prepares release of compilation "Greatest Hits Volume 1" collecting 22 best tracks of the first 10 years of group's existance ("Dance with Somebody", "Gloria", etc.) and it will be out in January. Compilation will also get Deluxe-version and DVD with 18 videos and film from Mando Diao's ”Ode To Ochrays”-tour, so band's fans will get loads of nice presents very soon.
"Christmas Could Have Been Good" is utterly pleasant mix of retro-atmosphere in an orchestral strings wrap and warm vibrating vocals, very peaceful and charming in a Christmas way.

This year Rockbjörnen seems to collect more pop-names than rock ones. Ola, Anna Bergendahl, Oskar Linnros, Salem al Fakir, Eric Saade, Kent, Mando Diao and foreign Tokio Hotel, Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber look especially on fire. I don't even have a clue how Justin Bieber got to (as I thought) Swedish category but seems like this guy has really powerful fanbase in Sweden. Linda Sundblad is going to be host of Rockbjörnen and you can watch interview with Rock-bear and her here.

Best female artist
Robyn
Melissa Horn
Amanda Jenssen
Anna Bergendahl
Agnes


Best group
Kent
Mando Diao
Hoffmaestro & Chraa
The Ark
In Flames


Best Swedish song
Från och med du – Oskar Linnros
Keep on walking – Salem Al Fakir
Unstoppable – Ola
Nothing without you – Mando Diao
Manboy – Eric Saade


Best breakthrough
Oskar Linnros
Eric Saade
Anna Bergendahl
Justin Bieber
Andreas Grega


Best male artist
Salem al Fakir
Oskar Linnros
Lars Winnerbäck
Eric Saade
Ola


Best foreign song
Tokio Hotel - World behind my wall
Lady Gaga - Bad romance
Justin Bieber - Baby
Lady Gaga - Telephone
Lady Gaga - Alejandro

Best concert
Tokio Hotel
Mando Diao
Lady Gaga
Kent
Lars Winnerbäck

Best festival
Peace & Love
Getaway
Sweden rock
Metaltown
Arvika

Creative activity of Eric Saade this Summer is quite high to hardly follow all of events he participates in and it's obviously effective as his album keeps in Top-20 since its release in May and currently its at #5. Surprisingly third Eric's single "Break Of Dawn" didn't succeed quite well and as debut "Sleepless" has spent only one week in chart but one position lower - at #45 and though his team released new mix version of the song being made not less than Le Kid it didn't help a lot. You can check Le Family remix below and convince yourself it's a really worthy track.

Right now Eric starts promoting his new single - effort to comeback to his Manboy-pop with a song "Masquerade" written by Eric with Anton Malmberg and Tony Malm of Le Kid. In my opinion it's not as successful choice as "It's Gonna Rain" but still it's a good radio-pop song - modern, catchy, well-produced and finally it works very well with just released video. Plot of the video continues previous video for "Break Of Dawn" with Eric playing role of servant fallen in love with the noble girl and coming to masquerade ball rushing all of his passion right on her. Surprisingly noble family's not so enthusiastic about this schlager-orgy right in front of all the guests and right after Eric's losing his head on a ball he's losing it literaly in the end of the party.

Last week Eric was also honoured to present his new single on tv-show Lotta På Liseberg and as always performance turned to a huge entertainment for obviously happy audience with nice choreography and costumes.

And finally great news! You have a chance to visit Eric's concert virtually. Set of concerts is organized by Aftonbladet's awards Rockbjörnen and right here you can book your free ticket to Eric's concert that will be held on August 18th at 21 of local time. Among other performers who will also arrange such virtual concerts that you can get tickets for are Mando Diao, The Ark, Salem al Fakir, Ola, Robyn and Anna Bergendahl.

These days I'm sorta lost track of the biggest music TV-shows of Sweden and seems like the most actual thing around them recently was not even performances but drama around low viewing figures of Allsång På Skansen and some radical decisions media required from this show like replacing Anders Lundin with Måns Zelmerlöw as a new host, you can read it more detailed in interesting article of our dear friend EuropeCrazy. Speaking about performances I'm not gonna give give a full review this time but mark some most interesting highlights. Let's start from Allsång På Skansen.

Huge public favorite Salem Al Fakir gave performance of his 2 last singles "Keep On Walking" and "4 O'Clock" well supported by audience, the last one turned to be especially joyful with such a wonderful public feedback.

Oskar Linnros has recently released album "Vilja Bli" that peaked at #2 and as I still can't write review of it you should also visit EuropeCrazy to read interesting review there. Oskar also performed his 2 last singles "Från och med du" and "Ack, Sundbyberg".

Jasmine Kara who just released her debut album "Blues Ain’t Nothing But A Good Woman Gone Bad" and autobiography "Hälsa henne att hon ska dö" performed already familiar for audience songs "In The Basement" and "Try My Love" showing all of her sweetness and amazing voice (still one of my top-candidates for Melodifestivalen-2011).

Mando Diao has chosen 2 biggest chart favorites "Dance With Somebody" and "Gloria", very high-level performance that you can expect from one of the most popular Swedish rock-bands.

And sure I need to mention amazing medley of Real Group singing some most notable Swedish export-hits mostly from Golden Cheiron era, much appreciated!

Adiam Dymott is relatively new but quite promising artist in Swedish music. Adiam's parents came from Eritrea and called their child in honour of an African Queen. Adiam had mixed music taste education having both hip-hop (Notorious B.I.G, The Wu-Tang Clan) and alternative rock (Nirvana, Garbage) idols, finally she decided to move herself in second direction. Indie label Razzia Records noticed her talent and in 2009 she released her debut self-titled album managing to get her first Top-10 hit "Miss You", another released single was "Pizza", it didn't become as successful but formed Adiam's music image as unique and expressive rock-artist. Touring during last year she's got support of such a big names like Thomas Rusiak, Harri Mänty (Kent), Mattias Bärjed (The Soundtrack of Our Lives) and Inge Johansson (The (International) Noise Conspiracy).
Now she's releasing her brand new single "Catch Me If You Can" featuring Björn Dixgård from Mando Diao and the single nicely unites sound both of Adiam Dymott and Mando Diao. You can also watch video for this song showing fabulous new look of Adiam making Kelly Rowland and the video itself sure deserves attention as well.