Swedish~ Stereo~

Best news of the day for us! Our favorite entry of this year's webjoker "Marilyn Monroe" from Never Alone has got to the final of contest where they'll be fighting with seven rivals for a ticket to Melodifestivalen live and we'll be madly supporting this song!
Another entry that has qualified to the final is Caroline Coquard's "Ingenting, ingen". You can check full order of song's placing in semifinal here.
Fourth semifinal has turned pretty strong. We've got a really nice rock-entry from 12-year-old Felicia Vårnäs "Not Over You" - female junior version of Daughtry-rock you can easily buy us with (wondering if Felicia will be allowed to sing in the final if she will qualify?), great tune and expression. If Marie Lindberg would serve as an example of how artist from ordinary folk should successfully win meloaudience - Vilda should get a pretty high mark in following it with her country-song "Box of Love". Vocally it sounds very professional and charming. I should also mention two dance-tracks - Carolina Jakobsson's "Believe" and Patrick Egemo's "Higher" with a proper festive atmosphere which could sound good in terms of production upgrade and singer-songwriter entry "Need To Know" from Bowties.

We've got two more finalists of Webjoker-2012 - "A Heartbeat Away" and "Beautiful Love" - we really like both of them but feel sorry about "What If" not qualifying, we've finally fallen for it the most but there are just two spots and we're looking for our new faves of the contest.
New semifinalists are already published (Chris Mhina with "No Games" was replaced by "Jag kommer ut" because author had some tracks commercially released before) and our biggest fail was to listen Never Alone's "Marilyn Monroe" the first - what a song!!! What a hit! It's just head and shoulders above everything else in this contest, modern electropop-song melodically in a vein of "Like Suicide" that could easily be on a new album of Salem al Fakir or Christian Walz and to top Swedish chart, good vocals, cool production, catchy text, amazing tune and even key-change, full pack that is ready for the final of Melodifestivalen, wow-wow-WOW!!! That was really hard to judge all the rest after but I should also mention light "Fångad Av en Stormvind" meets "E de fel på mig" schlager "Jag kommer ut" that I'd be interested to see performed in the final of webjoker but it's all about "Marilyn Monroe" for me and I'll be incredibly surprised if it won't be as well for Swedish televoters.

Update: look what an amazing cover of "Save The World" by Never Alone I've found on their Facebook page. Isn't it just fantastic?!!

"I mina drömmar" and "All Day All Night" have become first finalists of webjoker race for a ticket to Melodifestivalen-2012. Not our faves but we wish them good luck, still we're upset to see "Catch Me" third, this song deserved final the most.

Earlier this week SVT has disqualified 4 entries for being published before contest's start:
Trison - Set Me Free (1st sf)
My Niece - Mary Doesn't Care (3rd sf)
Albin Loán - Stars Might Shine (3rd sf)
My Niece - Fine (4th sf)

All of them except Trison were replaced by:
Fredrik Sjöstedt - She Is Love (3rd sf)
Chris Mhina - No Games (3rd sf)
Ricky och Ronny - Kärleken ler (4th)

We were absolutely shocked and glad seeing amazing new artist Chris Mhina (we were talking about just recently) in this list, his song "Last Dance" could be one of our favorites in the contest with a quality much higher than webjoker contest supposes.

Right now we can already listen to the second semifinal's songs and what do we have here?
Keylas this time have much better entry "For the Win" starting with Robyn's "Indestructible"-smelling intro and going to light electro-disco sport anthem. David Nestander has really charming warm soundtrack ballad "Beautiful Love". Elin Jakobsson's "I'm Yours" is minimalistic nice jazzy entry. "A Heartbeat Away" is big emotional power-ballad that sounds a bit too screaming but the song itself is really beautiful.
Another act has surprised us a lot, I mean Nordic Shine - not because of vocalist Stefan Lebrot's father has written Eurovision-1983 winning song but because of Kasper Lindgren - Prime STH ex-drummer who was working with Ace Of Base, Elena Paparizou, Camilla Brinck, Ana Johnsson and Dead By April and we use to fall for almost everything he works on. Boys participate with dramatic rock-song having theatrical feeling and a bit Chris Cornell sounding vocal. You can find some other stuff of Nordic Shine here.

Next year on Melodifestivalen don't stop surprising with some really intriguing names accompanied with really strong songwriters behind.
Here's another one. Nicke Borg from Backyard Babies will perform with the song "Leaving Home" co-written with Fredrik Thomander, Gary Wikström, Jojo Borg Larsson.
Backyard Babies is one of the most respectable rock-bands with more than 20 years history. Not to scare pop-fans of competition band plays quite accessible form of rock with some enjoyable melodic stuff and Epicentre team that co-wroted this song with Nicke and his wife (by the way another announced participant of Melodifestivalen-2011 - Pernilla Andersson is wife of Backyard Babies guitarist Dregen) has made some great stuff for Erik Grönwall, Sarah Dawn Finer, The Poodles, EMD and many-many others. They've already got song "Den Första Svalan" in MF-2008 with Alexander Schöld and has written some songs for Backyard Babies ("Nomadic", "Abandon") but as "Leaving Home" is described as ballad I guess we're gonna get something like "A Life To Die For" one of songs written by Epicentre for rock-band Treat (where Anders "Gary" Wikström perform himself).

List of Webbjoker-finalists is defined and we have 4 of our favorites in this list of 5! Completely amazing! I hoped that I'll get 2 but 4 is something completely unbelievable and it says that we're gonna get at least one really good webbjoker-song in competition. Final will be held next Monday on November 8th in 21.00 by local time and you'll be able to watch it on SVT site. So here they are - our lovely Engla with her jazzy schlager-bomb "Don't Stop", modern beautiful ballad "Better or Worse" from Julia Alvgard, sweet Summer pop from Jonas Matsson with his "On my own", raggae-pop goodies "I wanna be with you" from Anton & Dejo and the only song we haven't managed to fall for - "Tusen nätter" from the band BILLY - Gyllene Tider influenced punk-rock.

And last exciting news! Måns Zelmerlöw who already performed twice on Melodifestivalen is ready to support new participants. In Expressen he reveals that he's ready to start new label and Loreen who will perform with the song "My heart is refusing me" is the first artist their command work with. Måns is even going to be involved in performance. Sure it's gonna give Loreen bonus attention and we're not against as Loreen looks and sounds like really exciting candidate.

Some news that you should know if you are melo/eurofan or just around to check if we're still alive here. I am! Just a bit slowing down with October hyper-activity on blog. But you're good guys, we've got few hundreds more stable visits and I'm really glad you're with Swedish Stereo, feel like home, don't be shy and leave comments so I'll better see which artists are more interesting for you and which one I should put under the spot more frequently.
Alright back to post theme!
13th Melodifestivalen participant is officially announced and it's... Babsan!
Lars-Åke Wilhelmsson is 52 years old artist who just like After Dark has started his career back in 80s as dancer, clothes designer and drag show artist. Through many years Babsan has become popular character participating in different shows and public events and as well Lars was quite in demand as designer making costumes for some huge musicals. Recently he also worked in tour with After Dark.
Babsan will perform the song "Ge mig en spanjor" rejected year before and written by Larry Forsberg, Sven-Inge Sjöberg, Lennart Wastesson - songwriters behind "Crazy In Love", "La Dolce Vita" and "Wherever You Go". So no doubts some classic schlager is expected. How does Babsan sound with schlagers? Check the song "Gala Jetset Babsan" written by Thomas G:Son below and you'll see.

From other news webbjokers countdown is coming closer to Top-5 when everyday now we get one participant with least number of votes out and right now there are 8 participants left and we still have 5 our favorites in fight, the biggest ones in danger are Fredrik & Magnus and Julia Alvgard so please-please-please vote for them! And don't forget about sweetest Engla, Jonas Matsson and Anton & Dejo. Here they are, our webbjoker-saviours!

And the last thing - remember I told you about our "Drama" we've sent to Webbjoker contest? Currently we've sent it to Swiss pre-selection so if you like the song you can help us giving just a few minutes of your time. Just register on this site, fill this form, click the confirmation link in coming email, log in, mark us with 4 at this page and push button below. Thank you dear readers!

Preliminary selection of two Melodifestivalen-2011 participants are coming closer to the hottest point - live final that will be held in around a week when on November 8th we'll see 5 finalists competing to get just two tickets to Melodifestivalen. So very soon we'll know who will perform with hugest Swedish stars on one stage and hopefully will become new schlager-star and we're glad to present you our biggest hope of Webbjoker-contest - Engla who's competing with the song "Don't Stop" - very fresh jazzy track delievered with impressively strong and beautiful Engla's vocal, anthemic pop-chorus and completely ecstatic key-change growing and growing till the last note.

Hi Engla. It's amazing that you're in competition, strong pop-song built by all rules of schlager-contest but still in experimental and fresh sound is brilliant decision. Was it your plan when you started to work on the song for the contest or "Don't Stop" has come naturally before you with Sargon Jakob who has written the song decided to send it to Webbjokers-contest?

Hi! Well, I met Sargon and we decided to start working together. He told me that he would write me a song and that he had a something that he was already working on, although he couldn’t promise anything. After a couple of days he called me and presented me the song and I thought, “Hmm…this is Schlager candy,. I want this one” hihi. The idea with the Webbjoker came up and we decided to try it out.

You have such a well-trained professional vocal, I suppose it's Christina Aguilera who provided backing vocals for "my heart is on the rush" part, do you have some music education behind or in a process of studying?

I’m blushing :) I wish it was Xtina! I started an education, but dropped out after a year. The rest comes from the Universe and from training. But Sargon gets out the best of me when we record which is great help in the studio.

Sure living in Sweden it's hard completely not to follow Melodifestivalen as viewer, but have you dreamed entering it before as artist or this idea has appeared just recently?

Yes! It was a dream and still it is, because it is Sweden’s greatest and finest music competition. And to stand in the front of the Swedish people and represent them would be an honor.

Next year already has such a huge names like Danny, Sanna Nielsen, Linda Bengtzing. What do you consider as your strongest side to stand a fight with well-established melo-stars?

All these artist are very talented! But I think and do believe that I deliver something that is a bit different. I will give the Swedish audience something new and fresh. I have to believe in myself and my song, and I really do!

Question that maybe sounds a bit unoriginal but I just have to ask you. Which Melodifestivalen song(s) can you call your biggest favorite(s)?

Carola – Främling! Even though I wasn’t born haha!

Ok, let's imagine that you're already invited to MF. Can you tell conception of your dream performance, just forget about budgets, scale of Globen, allowed number of team members on the stage and so on, free your imagination and tell how do you see yourself on the stage of Melodifestivalen?

Wow! My concept would be filled with feelings but as a true artist I don’t want to reveal anything, even though it is just an imagination. I also would like to thank everyone who has voted for me and please continue.

Thank so much for interview Engla, we keep our fingers crossed, wish you best of luck and ask everyone who lives in Sweden - please DON'T STOP voting for this amazing song sending sms 142 to number 72211, cost is just a 3,60 kr, not a big price to get such a wonderful song to Melodifestivalen-2011! See you in Globen dear Engla!

THANK YOU!

Today count of 100 candidates for Melodifestivalen decreased to 50 and we like the rest of the biggest MF- and ESC-fans keep following this schlager-race that's gonna finish in 2 weeks on November 8th when we'll know names of 2 winners and participants of Melodifestivalen-2011. I'll remind you that on October 27th there'll stay only 20 songs, October 29th - 15, October 31st - 10 and after that every day one song will leave competition before 5 finalists will be defined and will participate in live final. Happily I can announce that 17 of left 50 songs are from list of my top-supported artists (and 4 are in Top-10) so here they are. Good luck guys!

I've got 3 important news regarding Melodifestivalen-2011 which I'm gonna share with you right now!
First one and the most important that we oficially have got new 8 announced artists and the most exciting word here is new! Just like Linda Bengtzing from the first bunch only Sanna Nielsen can be called here schlager-veteran and just like Linda she's coming with support of Thomas G:Son (I guess we're gona have a lot of G:Son's songs this year after his Top-5 on Eurovision this year). But not alone - Peter Boström, Bobby Ljunggren and Irini Michas are hard team behind the song "I'm In Love" so it's gonna be schlager of higher calibre.
Another one participant who already participated in Melodifestivalen but not solo is international sensation Danny and again song is co-written with Peter Boström (yesss!!!), Figge Boström and Danny, song is called "In The Club" so everything's pointing to the saddest heartbreaking ballad in the world, nah, this team is made for dancefloor killer-hit and the final in Globen without any "if" and "but"!
But the name I'm completely blown away is Dilba! One of the most inspiring artists of Sweden with music that's completely out of time is finally back after a long break and I'm so happy she's coming to Melodifestivalen. What makes it more interesting is that she's coming with Niklas Pettersson (responsible for some Velvet's and Daisy's hits) and Linda Sonnvik (who worked with Belle before) who wrote the song "Try Again".
Second ex-A*Teens part Sara Lumholdt is coming to Melodifestivalen with the song "Enemy" by Niclas Lundin (this year's song of Erik Linder) and Anton Malmberg Hård af Segerstad (Le Kid). Unfortunately Sara hasn't managed to properly establish solo-career so hopefully she'll make it this time.
Among loud names of this bunch you can also find Melody Club - popular pop/synth rock band that rotates in speculation lists not the first year and can easily be this year The Ark with the song "The Hunter".
More fresh names are Loreen (first Idol participant who completely disappeared for years after the show) with the song "My Heart Is Refusing Me" co-written with Moh Denebi and Björn Djupström and even newer for big audience Simon Forsberg with Fredrik Kempe's song "Tid att andas" and Rasmus Viberg with "Social Butterfly" written by another schlager-veterans - Amir Aly and Henrik Wikström. I'm gonna tell you about them a bit later.

Another exciting news are for all who's gonna visit Sweden to see Melodifestivalen next year. Tickets sales will be open this Thursday on October 21st so you'll be able to buy them from outside of Sweden on http://ticnet.se Prices and dates of concerts and general rehearsals are mentioned here.

And the last news. This week has shortened amount of webbjokers participants to 100 so you can check the chart and take a look at which songs are still in competition and which are going to leave it next week here. We have 25 favorites left so keep hoping that someone of them will reach the final!

By the way you can already mention logo of Melodifestivalen with silver gradient background in sales shops so seems like we've got new color of Melodifestivalen-2011!

I did it! I've sorted out all webbjokers to Melodifestivalen-2011 so huge congratulations to me. Finally I can say that 53 songs (that is little less than quarter) sound nice so there's huge choise of presented stuff and already tomorrow only 100 of songs will stay in competition so I'll put the rest of pleasant ones right now.

Soul/RnB
RnF - Echo love (148) - Danny-verses and nice poppy choruses, don't know where's soul or r'n'b here but it's very good song!
RnF - Stepped into you (273) - it has even more Danny but this time it's more r'n'b and the song is actually again quite qualitative.

Ballad/Rock
Clarity - Torn (288) - piano-based calm rock ballad with nice melodic vocal.

Ethno/Folk
Lillian Hörnberg och Mattias Gummesson - En saga har blivit sann (152) - atmospheric schlager-folk song that could be hit being performed by Timoteij.
Jenny och Sanna - Oknytt (330) - traditional Swedish folk-song, quite charming in vein of One More Time.

Jazz/Visa
Natalie - Just a dream (204) - gentle song sounding like soundtrack to French films, beautiful vocal with jazzy manner.
Conny Andersson - Kura Skymning (208) - another charming song in this category, probably not competition song but I don't mind of having it in my player.

Rock
Ann-Christine Johansson - Sanningen ska segra (255) - aggressive female rock with nice attitude.

Ballad pop
Julia Alvgard - Better or worse (118) - beautiful modern r'n'b balad with ultra-catchy chorus.
Rebecka Andom - I'll Kill You (191) - calm and pleasant American music inspired ballad with enjoyable vocals and huge personality, international hit-stuff.
Niklas Dahlquist - Här står jag för dig (180) - verrrrry Swedish schlager-ballad with ready schlager-artist attached.
Fabian - Simple life (262) - simple piano-song about simple life but vocal delivers it quite interesting way so it goes quite catchy.
Albin Loán - Tänker på dig (295) - it's like Darin singing some classic Swedish ballad, rough demo for now but feels like having potential.

House/techno
Twixie - Alone (107) - 90s dance track with autotuned vocals and sweet piano part.
Keylas - Crying in my dreams (131) - more modern dance song with dark meditative techno atmosphere.
Josefin Svensson - Now and forever (235) - back to 90s beat but with nice melody.

Various
Tune in - A song for people like us (106) - teen rock with amazing melody in chorus sounding like hit in terms of proper production.
Tune in - Best of ways (116) - another great melody from this singer, interesting, original and with huge potential.
Tune in - Wish you weren't (a part of me) (312) - and I'm finally in love with this talented artist!
Anton & Dejo - I wanna be with you (185) - warm raggae-pop in a style of Lovestoned's "Rising Girl", worthy a lot!

We keep investigating next bunch of candidates for Melodifestivalen-2011 and turn to more usual categories for Melodifestivalen - Eurovision pop and Schlager/dansband (+ Pop-group). Let's see what interesting we can find here.

Eurovision pop

Robin Kvarnström - Love you enough (#212) - dynamic pop-song with anthemic chorus and killing beat.
Emil Nyström - Millionaire (#219) - another song with lovely built pop-chorus and growing verses.
Joe Summer - Never let you go (#230) - club-track with nice dance-hook.
Never alone - Stop! (#277) - 80s stadium rock mixed with Eurovision feeling.
OneVoice - Varje steg (#299) - retro-schlager performed by twins, simple but very hypnotizing track.

Schlager/Dansband

Emil Johannisson - En sekund (#153) - 10-20 years ago this song could become MF-classic, however it's beautiful.
Gustav Lindskog - Hanna stanna (#167) - minimalistic in everything, but utterly catchy.
Göran Frödin - Kan du inte välja mig (#206) - another song with nice Eurovision-from-the-past feeling but this one reminds songs from the beginning of 00s.
Trison - Lovar & svär (#211) - happy song with Cheiron inspired production.

Pop-group

MTM - Come back baby (#121) - melodic teen-punk-rock poppier enough to fall into this category.
MLVNS - Denight (#139) - electro-track, original but definitely having something hypnotizing.
Kliniken - En dröm i december (#151) - uplifting pop-rock song with fresh atmosphere.
Fredrik och Magnus - Get out (#162) - great summerish song in the same league with Oskar Linnros "Från Och Med Du". One of our favorites in competition!
Souled Out - I will only try (#201) - nice mix of 80s pop and beautiful melody making it quite actual.
Marcus & Fredrik - She's making my day (#261) - radio-friendly guitar-pop.
Predicament - A fist full of maybe (#104) - calm rhythmic guitar-pop song with nice melody.
Adam Sandahl - Att vakna vid din sida (#112) - though this year Adam's song is not so strong I can't help mentioning it because it's old good webbjoker-veteran Adam. And he gets naked again! :))

And one more time make sure you didn't forget to vote for Horoscope's "Drama" in Pop-group category because it worth it and it's ours so please support us, we need it so much!!!!!!!!

This weekend I'll try to analyze all schlager-candidates in webbjoker-contest and really hope one of my (and your) favorites will be one of two winners. So let's start from pop-category, I can't honestly say something completely has blown my mind (remember it's contest among amateurs)but I've found some songs which can become hits with proper upgrade.

Hot candidates:
Engla - Don't stop (#142) - crossover between Sibel's "Stop" retro-feeling and loads of Christina Aguilera in passionate vocal manner.
Nadina - Change of heart (#127) - rhythmic warm girls-pop sung by very beautiful singer with intimate vocal.
Ceven - How Can I (#177) - nicely arranged stepping song that you could expect from A-Ha or Duran Duran.
Jonas Matsson - On my own (#240) - summerish guitar-raggae-pop on Lovestoned wave.
Mona Ersare - Over the Rooftops (#245) - beautiful acoustic country-song with charming violins part.
Ghena - Stand here (#269) - modern song with great attitude that could be huge hit in some American star performance in terms of re-producing.
Joseph Jericho - Up on the floor (#298) - low whispering verses with Santana smelling guitar and choruses a-la Mendez.
Johannah Granqvist - Whisper in your ear (#310) - etno-instrumental mixed with r'n'b vocal maner sounding like unreleased JLo's track.

Nice candidates:
Maliq - Believe in me (#115) - disco-pop of 80s with quite alive and charming artist
Anna Palmér - Echo (#147) - small sweet pop-song with beautiful female soul-vocal
Gmx - Gabbi Gabbi (#160) - nice 90s breathing pop melody, could be a huge hit 15 years ago but still quite enjoyable.
Peter Winterqvist - My kind of lover (#227) - poppier version of Bon Jovi rock slightly powdered with country-mood.
Jessica Zati - My mind (#228) - hard-synth and light positively naive 80s melody work very well together.
Robin Elmlund - The letter (#281) - Nickelback (or some another American rock-band) inspired radio-pop with pleasant vocal.
Tom Rose - Tricky tricky (#291) - modern electro-pop track with blasting chorus.
Sandra Andersson - Unbroken dreams (#296) - retro-pop-rock with lovely melody.

Webbjoker-contest has just begun and we've got 231 participants this year.
I'll remind you that SVT's making annual contest among unsigned, unprofessional artists second year and two winners of competition will participate in Melodifestivalen-2011.
Later today I'm gonna start writing about some nice discoveries of the contest as there you can find some definitely very interesting stuff but for now I can happily announce that Swedish Stereo's project Horoscope's participating in contest this year with the song "Drama". It's a huge anthemic pop-song combining some best moments of BWO and Lady Gaga that's going to be a great treat for next year MF. For now this demo is a bit rough and made just for few hours and doesn't show all the brilliance of the song but we're gonna remake it in nearest time and show you everything you love so much in the show - we're gonna get at least 50 windmachines, dance naked in the rain on the stage, set Globen on fire of our fireworks, fly under the roof of stadium and lead herds of elephants. Oh are animals forbidden at Eurovision? Come on! Who cares? We're gonna break all the rules! Gaga keeps calling since morning and begs for this song, but we have to refuse as we want it to be performed at Melodifestivalen first!
So if you live in Sweden send sms with number 143 at 72211 (it costs 3,60 kr), click at Facebook like button under this post, spread the word about "Drama" and you will get the most amazing performance at Melodifestivalen-2011 and our eternal love!!!