Swedish~ Stereo~

Charlotte Perrelli has turned her career to a musical path this Autumn. She has a starring role in a musical Evita and she has decided to release a main soundtrack - Andrew Lloyd Webber's "Don't Cry For Me Argentina" as a new single.
If you heard Charlotte's Christmas album "Rimfrostjul" you know how she can sound with an orchestra so it's right as big, beautiful and contains both Swedish and English version of the song in radio and extended cuts. You can find Charlotte singing Swedish "Don't Cry For Me Argentina" in this video at 2.55.

Yes, Hera Björk is not really Swedish so probably you didn't expect her to appear on our blog but this woman has entered Eurovision history with Swedish-written song to finally take part in the competition with Swedish-produced another one so Hera definitely loves Swedish music and has proved it in a special recent ESC-cruise where she performed along with a bunch of other ESC-artists like Vukašin Brajic and Ott Lepland and was singing some Melodifestivalen-winning songs - Anna Bergendahl's "This Is My Life" (competing at the same year at Eurovision as Hera) and Charlotte Perrelli's "Take Me To Your Heaven". Both performances are already uploaded by escstats.com and you can check them below.

When you start thinking Loreen can't surprise you with a new performance of "Euphoria" she enters the stage and shocks with her energy and THE VOICE! This time she has also made an absolutely epic performance with drums explored by her in a mini-tour she makes in Sweden right now.
We've already got Diggiloo-gang with Charlotte Perrelli, Jessica Andersson, Markoolio, Magnus Carlsson and The Moniker. Kalle Moraeus was making his "Underbart" and playing with Alexander Rybak.
Norlie & KKV were a nice live-discovery for me and Lasse Stefanz, well, not the stuff I usually writes about.

Lotta has no luck with weather this year, viewers again had to sit in raincoats so the artists had to bring the heat with their performances.
Today it was all about musicals. Lotta has arranged a mini-musical with participation of all artists. And except always fabulous Charlotte Perrelli and Youngblood singing songs from their latest albums we had a nice portion of ABBA with Göteborg's Opera singing Chess and Lotta making "Dancing Queen" karaoke.

All Stars musical
Charlotte Perrelli, Lotta Engberg, Youngblood, GöteborgsOperan - Musikalmedley
Yougblood - Du är så underbart rar
GöteborgsOperan - Vem ser ett barn, Mitt hjärtats land
Lotta Engberg - Dancing queen

Waiting for a series of new post-MF albums from Timoteij, David Lindgren and Molly Sandén coming very soon I'd like to turn your head to another worth mentioning work of this Spring, the one you probably even got tired of. Or probably you're going to play it till the very end of this year, or years more... However Charlotte Perrelli's "The Girl" hasn't failed to meet the expectations, the album has become a proper pop-treatment and has peaked at #7 of Swedish chart which is Charlotte's second best result after "Hero" (#3).
While "Little Braveheart" starts spreading in Europe, I'd like to mention another great dance track - "In The Sun". Starting with a slow growing intro as all good schlagers are supposed to it surprisingly turns to a big dance summerish anthem, poptastic and happy. As dubstep becomes a trend in Swedish pop this song also includes dubstep middle-eight. The song was written by the same team behind "The Girl" and "Little Braveheart" - Fredrik Kempe and Alexander Jonsson with producing help of Elias Kapari and the lyrics from Sharon Vaughn.

Charlotte Perrelli's album is finally out this week, grand pop-compilation including tracks from Fredrik Kempe, Tony Nilsson, Sharon Vaughn, Fredrik Thomander, Johan *Star Pilots* Becker and many others that I was talking about before and which absolutely can't disappoint.
Probably the biggest diamond of this album is out online and you can listen to it already. Charlotte has joined forces with Kate Ryan to record the song "Little Braveheart" written by Fredrik Kempe, Alexander Jonsson and Elias Kapari. Alexander and Fredrik have already written comeback single "The Girl" for Charlotte but this song has nothing to do with disco-sound of that one. "Little Braveheart" sounds modern, international and very RedOne, you can easily imagine it as a new JLo's dance-single, one of the biggest pop-goodies of this schlager-season.

The latest schlager-trip of Eurovision-winner Charlotte Perrelli hasn't become as successful as it was in 2008, 5th place of semifinal that we expected to happen but still very sad about. Though Charlotte's new disco-anthem hasn't gathered enough votes at Melodifestivalen the single has appeared in iTunes-charts of Norway and Finland right after release and now Charlotte's ready for release of her new "The Girl" album that will include 8 new tracks.
Album snippets are already out here and as I did when I first listened to Charlotte's previous album in 2008 I directly in love with it. It feels really fresh and still Charlotte knows her safe area to bring joy to Swedish pop-fans to be paid by their love instead. It's also quite different from almost RedOne-smelling duo with Kate Ryan "Little Braveheart" and another disco-track with Kate's vibes "Dark to the Light" to r'n'b ballad like "Just Not Tonight" and JoJo-sounding "Closing Circles". It's early to judge by 30-seconds snippets but it's right time to get excited!

Charlotte looks just smoking hot these days! The girl is definitely ready for her fabulous return to Melodifestivalen and if you've missed this fact - her song "The Girl" is written by team behind Andreas Wijk's "Like My Style" (Fredrik Kempe and Alexander Jonsson) that I still adore. I've missed mentioning her summer performance at Lotta på Liseberg so if you've missed too, here it is.

You probably have already managed to read about official line-up of Melodifestivalen-2012 on some ESC or Swedish music related sites. I wasn't in a hurry as all of these artists but one were quessed before and you could read about them here. Anna Järvinen has refused to participate in the last moment so she was replaced by David Lindgren. Danny has also changed his song for more proper for MF right before official announcement.
I've collected some descriptions of tracks from SVT, QX, Schlagerprofilerna, Scandipop and Schlagerzoot so you could realize in common what should we expect from MF this time.
Pictures are taken from expressen.se and svd.se.

Semifinal 1: Växjö

Loreen "Euphoria"
(Thomas G:son, Peter Boström)
- dynamic, mystic and dramatic song with "Cry Me A River"-feeling and ambient-sound crawling under your skin.


The Moniker "I Want To Be Chris Isaak (This Is Just the Beginning)"
(Daniel Karlsson (The Moniker))
- track having nothing common with "Oh My God", it's more green than golden, not attached to any genre, more rhythmic and oriental.


Thorsten Flinck & Revolutionsorkestern "Jag reser mig igen"
(Thomas G:son, Ted Ström)
- heavy melodic track in classic schlager-tradition with at the same time personal and common lyrics.


Dead by April "Mystery"
(Pontus Hjelm)
- epic (not a ballad) pop-metall in-your-face track with a strong chorus not written especially for MF sounding in a vein of the latest band's album, the hardest MF entry ever.


Abalone Dots "På väg"
(Rebecka Hjukström, Sophia Hogman, Louise Holmer, Viktor Källgren)
- melancholic love ballad with banjo in a minor and nyckelharpa typical for Abalone Dots style.


Marie Serneholt "Salt & Pepper"
(Lina Eriksson, Mårten Eriksson, Figge Boström)
- swinging and spicy uptempo-track.


Sean Banan "Sean Den Förste Banan"
(Sean Simadi (Sean Banan), Joakim Larsson, Hans Blomberg, Mårten Andersson)
- typical Sean Banan's entertaining track without any calm moment and with a message that everybody can be a king in their own ways.


Afro-Dite "The Boy Can Dance"
(Figge Boström, Catrine Loqvist, Johan Lindman)
- 70s inspired happy disco track with a modern sound.


Semifinal 2: Göteborg

Andreas Lundstedt "Aldrig Aldrig"
(Niclas Lundin, Maria Marcus, Randy Goodrum)
- melancholic uptempo song about breaking up, not a disco but this is the song you can dance and cry listening to.


Top Cats "Baby Doll"
(Mårten Eriksson, Lina Eriksson, Susie Päivärinta)
- positive energetic rock'n'roll track in a full tempo.


Mimi Oh "Det går för långsamt"
(Anton Malmberg Hård af Segerstad, Niclas Lundin)
- slightly 80s inspired honest and straight bombastic pop-track with catchy choruses and modern sound.


Thomas Di Leva "Ge aldrig upp"
(Thomas Di Leva)
- uplifting energetic song with a certain message.


Sonja Aldén "I din himmel"
(Sonja Aldén, Bobby Ljunggren, Peter Boström)
- recognizable follow-up of "För att du finns", calm but strong and pulsating.


David Lindgren "Shout It Out"
(Fernando Fuentes, Tony Nilsson)
- positive dance-track requiring big dance-performance.


Ulrik Munther "Soldiers"
(Ulrik Munther, Johan Åberg, Linnea Deb, Joy Deb, David Jackson)
- fresh pop-rock song about relationships and forgiveness with millitary feeling not going too far from Ulrik's debut album sound and closer to his "The Box".



Timoteij "Stormande hav"
(Kristian Lagerström, Johan Fjellström, Stina Engelbrecht, Jens Engelbrecht)
- energetic pop-folk uptempo schlager with Irish influences and heavier than their previous stuff though in a same vein.


Semifinal 3: Leksand

Mattias Andréasson "Förlåt mig"
(Mattias Andréasson)
- fresh Swedish pop with American influences (earlier described as r'n'b in Swedish sounding in Oskar Linnros' style).



Maria BenHajji "I mina drömmar"
(Nanna Sveinsdóttir, Thomas Cars)
- webjoker - classic schlager-ballad from "För att du finns" and "Med hjärtat fyllt av ljus" family.


Love Generation "Just A Little Bit"
(Nadir Khayat (RedOne), John Mamann, Jean-Claude Sindres, Teddy Sky, Yohanne Simon, Bilal "The Chef" Hajji)
- explosive pop-track with attitude, power and happiness.



Andreas Johnson "Lovelight"
(Andreas Johnson, Peter Kvint)
- Faces go partying with T Rex, Blur and Robbie Williams, positive track with gospel-touch closer to a style of Andreas' first MF-entries "Sing For Me", "A Little Bit Of Love".


Björn Ranelid feat. Sara Li "Mirakel"
(Fredrik Andersson, Björn Ranelid)
- clubby track with happy chorus and poetic lyrics.


Carolina Wallin Pérez "Sanningen"
(Michael Clauss, Martin Bjelke, Carolina Wallin Pérez, F Dread)
- drum cavalcade melancholic synth-pop crossing borders and flirting with rock.


Molly Sandén "Why Am I Crying"
(Molly Sandén, Aleena Gibson, Windy Wagner)
- modern pop-ballad with honest lyrics about broken heart that many are gonna take as personal.


Youngblood "Youngblood"
(Fredrik Kempe, David Krüger)
- uptempo feelgood sing-a-long track with modern sound and recognizable Fredrik Kempe's style.


Semifinal 4: Malmö

OPA "Allting blir bra igen"
(Michael Sideridis)
- swinging, catchy, Greek folk-pop.


Danny Saucedo "Amazing"
(Danny Saucedo, Peter Boström, Figge Boström)
- uptempo track from "In The Club" team, more positive and arena-oriented.


Lotta Engberg & Christer Sjögren "Don't Let Me Down"
(Lasse Holm, Lars "Dille" Diedricson)
- mature euroschlager with modern sound and adrenaline rush.


Hanna Lindblad "Goosebumps"
(Hanna Lindblad, Linda Sundblad, Tony Nilsson)
- 80s inspired song with loads of energy and love.


Axel Algmark "Kyss mig"
(Axel Algmark, Mattias Frändå, Jonathan Magnussen)
- happy pill with party feeling.



Dynazty "Land Of Broken Dreams"
(Thomas G:son, Thomas "Plec" Johansson)
- 90s hardrock song hitting you like a punch.


Charlotte Perrelli "The Girl"
(Fredrik Kempe, Alexander Johnsson)
- fresh clubby uptempo sing-along track with electro-sound and schlager-glitter.


Lisa Miskovsky "Why Start A Fire"
(Lisa Miskovsky, Aleksander With, Bernt Rune Stray, Berent Philip Moe)
- forest minstrel in love with Prince and Kate Bush.

Niklas Anderson who's mostly known in Sweden by his multiple roles in musicals and also participated twice in Melodifestivalen - in 2002 (with the song "I Want You") and in 2004 (with the song "Tro på mig") releases new compilation of ballad covers "Feelings" featuring two grand ladies of Swedish schlager - Charlotte Perrelli and Shirley Clamp.
Niklas has recorded Laura Branigan's cover "How Am I Supposed to Live Without You" with Charlotte updating it with massive orchestral sound and making it big and beautiful like a huge wedding cake. Maybe too sweet for you but still you can't deny it's beautiful!
The song is streaming here or you can play it right below.

We've lost a track of the latest episodes of "Moraeus med mera" that had more than worthy line-ups all the time though. Today Andreas Johnson and Tove Styrke performing their latest singles couldn't leave us silent so here are the most interesting performances of the last month from Sanna Nielsen, Charlotte Perrelli, Daniel Adams-Ray, Serenades, Lisa Misovsky, BAO singing ABBA-classics and Veronica Maggio performing with Benny Andersson.