Swedish~ Stereo~

Swedish version of The Voice has started this week and it's another show blocked by TV4 for foreigners this year so if you don't live in Sweden you can only fish pieces of it on youtube and other sites.
Jury of the show has become really outstanding - two Melodifestivalen winners, schlager-rock veteran and probably the biggest hip-hop favorite of Sweden lately. Logically we've got this glorious gang opening show and they've chosen Oskar Linnros' "Genom Eld" to perform together, you can watch below what has come out of this.

Seems like since last year's "Ta Min Hand" we didn't have any bunch of Swedish artists gathering to perform some charity song so we've got such case now.
Tove Styrke, Amanda Jenssen, Daniel Adams-Ray, Jasmine Kara, Timbuktu, Pauline, Petter and many other artists united as Kedjan have recorded song "Ringar på vattnet", all income from sales will go to Somalis suffering from famine catastrophe in the Horn of Africa.
Talking about "Ringar på vattnet" it's nothing more that just a pleasant calm hip-hop track with soft melodic choruses but with its emotional background story it turns worth checking.

Debut season of Så Mycket Bättre presented whole series of hits firstly from Petter who was the first of participants shooting with loads of his covers in iTunes chart but then came Petra "September" Marklund and she has torn the chart for real with her cover for Petter's "Mikrofonkåt" and it wasn't her last success as another two covers "Vem Ska Jag Tro På" and "Kärlekens Tunga" being released a bit later joined "Mikrofonkåt" - invincible #1 place of iTunes chart (and already double #1 in common chart) in Top-5. So Petter and Petra decided to unite their forces releasing brand new single "Baksmälla" together and premiered it on the radio today!
"Baksmälla" sounds exactly like you could expect from September new Swedish electro side, it's less dancey than "Mikrofonkåt" and more urban in Petter-style with a bit more commercial wrap that can allow this song to get even longer life on Swedish radiostations. Cold dance electro sound with Petra's intimate vocals and Petter's rap - it's all there, it all works and it's just created to be a hit!

Next episode of Så mycket bättre show turned participants to another artist's tribute and this time it was schlager-veteran Lill-Babs. Ex-husband Lasse Berghagen has made calm retro soul-smelling version of "Är Du Kär I Mig Ännu Klas-Göran?". Christer Sandelin also decided not to go too far from original 50s version with cover of "April april". Thomas Di Leva from happy covers turned to slow half-acoustic "När vi älskar". Plura had as usual calm guitar-pop cover of "Snurra Min Jord". Petter who released already 2 singles from the show and both are currently in Top-10 on iTunes presented probably his most enjoyable cover of "Tuff brud i en lyxförpackning". September who's also going to realese successful cover of Petter's "Mikrofonkåt" performed again dance-version of "Leva Livet" but in a colder electro-sound with different tune in chorus-line. There are three cross tribute-shows left (not sure about theme of the 8th one) - for Plura, Christer Sandelin and September, I wonder if September's going to sing cover for Christer's biggest hit "Vill ha dig" in Style that Petra did in the beginning of her career? Hope so as it was brilliant!

This week on "Så mycket bättre" artists prepared their covers for Petter's songs and it's actually not so easy task for pop-artists to make interesting covers for rap-artist (actually many participants has complicated format and completely different music).
Christer Sandelin has made interesting cover of "Vinden har vänt" with light raggae touch. Di Leva provided very atmospherical charming indie-version of "Min egen kärleksaffär". Lill-Babs "Så klart" has gone a bit latino chill-out. Lasse Berghagen has made ballad-version of "Längesen" (featuring Veronica Maggio in original version). Plura's cover of "Logiskt" has ended up in pop-rock version. Finally the most interesting for us performance again was provided by Petra Marklund and this time she has made dance-version of "Mikrofonkåt", Petra already has shown her ballad and indie side but there's no need to say that Petra's genre is dance so she not only sounded but looked completely perfect and comfortable in this cover!

TV4 starts new show "Så mycket bättre" (So much better) that I told you about before. During 8 series you'll be able to see Lasse Berghagen, Lill-Babs, Petter, Thomas Di Leva, Petra "September" Marklund, Christer Sandelin and Plura Jonsson who had to spend a week living in one house and singing covers for each other hits. First day that was shown today was devoted to Lasse Berghagen's songs. Biggest highlight of the show was to finally see and listen Petra Marklund with beautiful cover of Lasse's classic hit "Teddybjörnen Fredriksson". Another nice covers were done by Lill-Babs, Thomas Di Leva and Christer Sandelin (from Style), it's a bit hard to judge such a retro-stuff but still it looks like a nice idea to collect such a different but popular artists and make them to arrange tribute-nights for each other (sure I can't wait for September's night!). Watch whole show here.

It's my first September post and I'd like to devote it one of the greatest artists of Sweden - September and I have a reason for it, I'd say whole bunch of reasons!
Very soon Swedish dancing queen Petra "September" Marklund is gonna break a pause that she took after completely crazy period starting from her international breakthrough with single "Satellites" in 2006. After this she has managed to release her third fantastic album "Dancing Shoes", to make her biggest world-wide blast with single "Cry For You", to release multiple compilations of her hits around the world and to bring loads of gigs and appearances almost everywhere.
This October Petra is back with brand new single! But besides it we're gonna get Petra on TV in new show on TV4 where she should live together with another musicians - Petter, Christer Sandelin, Barbro "Lill-Babs" Svensson, Tomas Di Leva, Per "Plura" Jonsson, Lasse Berghagen around week and make some covers for hits of each other, Petra has already chosen songs and promises to show completely new side of September. Season will include around 8 episodes, it will be shot in September and shown approximately in October. And this is not the last news. Petra has become model of cosmetics company FACE Stockholm and you can already see a banner with her above. What a gorgeous look, isn't it?
It's actually great that Petra's coming back to Sweden and we have a chance to see her in some local events and shows, if you didn't see her performance in last season of Så Ska Det Låta you can do it right now, it's really joyful!

Some news for all who missed Veronica Maggio and sure for all who likes Petter. Petter's releasing his collaboration with Veronica as a single.
In a few words about Petter he came to music in 90s with hip-hop band Sherlock but going solo little later he showed himself like a really successful artist selling platinum albums and making a lot of hits. This year he's back with the album "En räddare i nöden" and after the first single "Gör min dag" we got follow-up.

"Längesen" is a calm melodic piano-based hip-hop song with pitchy-filtered Akon-like vocal in refrain turning to a beutiful intimate vocal of Veronica. Kaveh Azizi recently has made very nice mix for this song.

New Sommarkrysset provides new artists, songs and great performances.
Robyn performed her new single "Dancing On My Own", should I even mention that it was amazing? I guess no as Robyn can't do any other way and girl was awarded with #1 of Swedish iTunes today. Another new single "Crash And Burn" was performed by Idol-winner Erik Grönwall, quite energetic performance with powerful Erik's vocals and band Fashion behind him (I'll tell you about this amazing project later), weird that on the other hand it didn't help him a lot (#189 on iTunes). Cookies & Beans sang just released single "I Just Don't Have The Heart" from their last album "Beg, Borrow and Steal" with their special voices. Audience has also got a chance to hear already well-known hits like "Du Gör Min Dag" by Petter and "Famous" by Play who obviously made another great performance and was met very warm by folk in Gröna Lund. Finally Rigo premiered his new cover-single of Arrow "Hot Hot Hot" as Crossfire with choir he's gathered in recent season of show Körslaget.