Swedish~ Stereo~

Fredrik Kempe is one of the most popular and successful Melodifestivalen songwriters, every single year his songs participate in the contest and at least one of them becomes hot public favorite.
It all has started back in 2004 when Fredrik has entered the contest performing his own song "Finally" that reached Second Chance round and has ended up with three winning songs ("Hero" (2008), "La Voix" (2009) and "Popular" (2011)). 17 entries during 7 years (he has missed 2006) but we don't have a doubt that after "Popular" success this number will get bigger in the next season.
This week Fredrik has performed potpurri of his most successful hits with Stockholms Musikkår Tre Kronor at Allsång på Skansen, I bet many melofans was wondering how these songs will sound in songwriter's version so here they are - "Manboy", "Hero", "Hope & Glory", "Moving On", "La Voix" and "Popular".
One week ago Eric Saade was at Allsång på Skansen and you can check his own version of "Popular" below.

Today one of our favorite Swedish Idol participants Erika Selin celebrates 19th birthday, our warmest congratulations come to her and isn't it great for artist to celebrate it with new release?
Erika united forces to reach post-Idol success with another participant of Idol-2009 Patrik Öhlund and they release new single "For You", written by Patrik and his wife Madelene Hamberg-Öhlund.
Idol wasn't the first huge tv-contest for Patrik Öhlund though, he participated in Fame Factory before and used to release some solo-stuff before visiting casting of Idol and reaching public voting unfortunately this rock-fellow wasn't estimated by audience quite well to pass to Friday's evening shows but another part of this duo - Erika Selin has managed and what a brilliant set of performances she has done! Actually Erika wasn't absolutely new for Idol and she tried to enter year ago but failed to reach public voting just one step before it. She didn't waste her time and tried to practice her skills, performing a lot and participating in different contests and that's when she's got to my personal spot - when I've found one of her impressive performances of Sarah Dawn Finer's "Moving On" cover. Finally entering Idol this 18-years old girl showed shockingly stunning vocals giving every week very self-confident strong performance, I was lucky enough to meet her once after her performance and was pleasantly surprised what a sweet, shy and charming person she is in real life.

Soon Erika's list of achievements was filled with performance of huge Melodifestivalen-2009 hit "Kom" demo being sung by Timoteij afterwards. Unfortunately she couldn't participate with this song herself as one of MF-principles is not to involve last season Idols. However Erika would really like to participate in MF in future and that's the wish I totally support as well.

Right now Patrik and Erika supported by label Sweden Songs prepared release of new single "For You", it's a delicate rock-ballad with nostalgic 90s feeling and beautiful instrumental part with a soft touch of Billie Myers' "Kiss the Rain". Let's wish all the best to this new-born duo.

Swedish pop- and soul-queen Sarah Dawn Finer has released her devotional single "Kärleksvisan" for princess Victoria's wedding that she performed previous week on a big concert right before the wedding. This is incredibly touching acoustic ballad that appeared first time on the last golden Sarah's album "Moving On" in English version as "For A Friend" and later as soundtrack of Swedish film "Så Olika" in new Swedish version. Right after release this single reached 2th place of iTunes (special Agnes' and Björn Skifs' wedding song still holds #1 hard). Currently Sarah's preparing her next album that will be out on the first week of November and will be mostly acoustic due to her own words. I'll remind you that star of Sarah Dawn Finer has risen up in 2007 after ultra-successful debut with beautiful soul-ballad "I Remember Love" that came fourth in the final of Melodifestivalen (that is realy huge success for artist not well-known for wide audience who released only one EP "Sarah Dawn Finer" before), the song sold gold, became a massive radio-hit and debut Sarah's album "A Finer Dawn" peaked at #2 of Swedish chart. Sarah came back to Melodifestivalen in 2 years this time with heart-breaking pop-rock song "Moving On" written together with Fredrik Kempe and amazing show causing loads of tears of touched audience. The song came 6th in the final but again became one of the biggest radio-hits of the year and new album "Moving On" has reached #1 and sold gold. Recently Sarah finished her sold-out tour and ready for a new stage of her music life with a new album.

Young Eric Saade has got so much success for last 6 months - debut solo-single, debut music video, Top-3 of Melodifestivalen final, golden debut album, thousands of fans, honour of announcing Swedish votes on Eurovision-2010, so now it's left only to fix results with showing a little different side of Saade's music and Eric remembers about it releasing new single - another song co-written by Fredrik Kempe but this time it's a ballad following "Moving On"-"Hollow" line of Fredrik music direction. Video is shot by famous video director Mikeadelica and is very pleasant and qualitative video that's undoubtfully gonna give a new push to Eric's album "Masquerade".