Swedish~ Stereo~

When the last Melodifestivalen-2011 single has left the chart it's time to check who was the most successful commercially this year.
I should say that obviously 2011 was quite terrible by sales comparing with previous years. Was it the lack of interest to chosen songs? Or was it because of just a few songs released physically and audience being ok with listening to digitally released ones on Spotify? I don't have a clue. I was sure that songs like "The Hunter", "Lucky You", "Elektirsk", "No One Else Could" even failing to qualify sounded like a huge radio-hits but they haven't even charted. My personal opinion is that Melodifestivalen has got a crisis. Old schlager-formulas wasn't working already - Sanna and Linda winning their semifinals haven't even made Top-10 spending 3-4 weeks in chart but at the same time public wasn't quite open for newcomers and when MF-2010 every semifinal had surprising winner (Salem, Anna, Timoteij, Eric), this time it was all about names already successfully established in the contest. Result? Final without intrigue and... hmmm... not outstanding sales figures.
Dilba, Christian Walz and Le Kid are the only charting not qualifiers of semifinals.
All finalists and Second Chance qualifiers except Shirley's Angels have charted but were separated into 2 groups - those who reached Top-10 and stayed in chart 9 weeks and more (six finalists - Eric, Danny, Swingfly, The Moniker, Sara, Nicke + Loreen) and those who weren't accepted by Top-10 and left in 4 weeks or less.
Hope right now SVT is selecting songs which will get to chart without excepion and if you've missed news about Webjoker-2012 in short - channel will choose 32 songs, will separate them to 4 semifinals and every week SVT and public will be voting for their own winner of semifinal, favorites of both will go to the final (between 8 songs) that will be held around November 7th. There's no information about when the first official (non-webjokers) participants will be announced but year ago it has happened on October 7th so we don't need to wait too long. You can check Poplight's article about possible candidates, the most interesting for us is if songs of Nina Söderquist, Lili & Susie and Timoteij will be accepted and if new H.e.a.t. with Idol-2009 winner Erik Grönwall will agree to participate with Fredrik Kempe's song.

Not charted singles:

Anders Fernette - Run
Anniela - Elektrisk
Babsan - Ge mig en spanjor
Elisabeth Andreassen - Vaken i en dröm
Jonas Matsson - On My Own
Julia Alvgard - Better or Worse
Lasse Stefanz - En blick och nånting händer
Linda Sundblad - Lucky You
Melody Club - The Hunter
Rasmus Viberg - Social Butterfly
Sara Lumholdt - Enemy
Sebastian - No One Else Could
Shirley's Angels - I Thought It Was Forever
Simon Forsberg - Tid att andas

Yes. This is the question that yesterday morning appeared in my head. It feels like we've completely lost the track of the last Idol-winner Erik Grönwall and how is it going right now with him in new band after his busy Summer of solo-touring.
Twitter of H.e.a.t is constantly active though and you can find out that the band doesn't stop permanent recordings, rehearsals and performances (new album is planned for the first half of next year). But sure it's better to see once than to read many times so here it is. The biggest H.e.a.t's Melodifestivalen hit "1000 Miles" in new version being sung by Erik. Vocally great but something's missing, no?

Earlier this year popular hardrock-band H.e.a.t. that participated in Melodifestivalen-2009 with the song "1000 Miles" has announced that frontman Kenny Leckremo is leaving group because of problems with voice, moving to UK and therefore having no ability to be a part of H.e.a.t. However the rest of the band decided to move on and immediately started search for a new vocalist. What a huge surprise it was when today H.e.a.t. oficially announced winner of the last Idol season Erik Grönwall new vocalist of band! Erik turned be very successful Idol-winner, 6 of his live covers already got to singles-chart during his participation in Idol, debut covers-album released right after the final reached #1 of albums-chart and second album "Somewhere Between A Rock And A Hard Place" peaked at #2 so probably noone supposed Erik to join some band at least so fast. However both Erik and H.e.a.t. look very optimistic about their union and new H.e.a.t is ready for record of new album and new European and Japanese tour.

Today new Ola's video for his last single "Overdrive" was premiered by Aftonbladet. Very summerish nice and simple video showing day of Ola - waking up in his bedroom (yep, we watched it recently in videos of Eric Saade and Erik Grönwall), walking on the street and running-running-running - around the city, somewhere outside at meadow, on the beach finally being stopped by the wall (that seemed to be really hurtful for both Ola and wall). Enjoy!

TV4 keeps making us happy with new live gigs of Swedish music royalty and now you can watch performances of Magnus Carlsson with his latest singles "A Little Respect" and "Feel You" and some old hits like "Kom Hem", "Live Forever" (ballad version), Charlotte Perrelli with her classics "Take Me To Your Heaven", "Gröna Små Äpplen", "I Will Survive", "Hero", performance finished with Magnus and Charlotte last duo single "Mitt Livs Gemål". Nanne also gave very energetic gig with some old hits like "Jag måste kyssa dig", One More Time's "Den Vilda", "Det vackraste", "Avundsjuk", "Håll Om Mig" and sure her last single "Inatt är jag din". And Erik Grönwall presented his songs from new album "Stay", "Take Me On", "Somewhere Between A Rock And A Hard Place", "Crash and Burn", some stuff from his debut album like "18 and life" and "Higher" and even got Calle Kristiansson (runner-up of last Idol) to the stage.

After releasing second album obviously time has come for the winner of Idol-2009 Erik Grönwall to finally shoot some music video and today it has arrived! Second single is gonna be promoted surprisingly fast (less than in 2 months) after "Crash and Burn" (that debuted in Top-10 but fell out of the chart in a month), it's a very nice rock-song written by Europe's frontman Joey Tempest that should give Erik bonus-attention and some additional audience not only inside of Sweden. The video reminds me a lot of Erik Hassle's "Hurtful" and it's all about Erik with his girlfriend in the bed, out of the bed and somewhere near the bed, simple but at least fans will get something.

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.

Erik Grönwall, the winner of Idol-2009, in a few months after his victory and debut cover-album releases follow-up "Somewhere Between A Rock And A Hard Place". I should mention that first album "Erik Grönwall" held the first place of album-chart around a month that is not weak at all for Swedish Idol's winner and the winning single "Higher" was holding 6 weeks on the first place of single-chart also. Can new album achieve the same success? We will know very soon, album is already in sale and you can taste the pieces of it below. How we could suppose it's a completely rock-album, you won't find here such a modern pop-songs like "Higher" but you'll find a lot of 80s and 90s rock-songs perfectly suiting Erik's voice from set of brilliant songwriters like Joey Tempest (Europe), Sharon Vaughn, Michel Zitron, Max Martin, David Stenmarck, Brian McFadden, Johan Becker, Jörgen Elofsson, Andreas Carlsson, Paul Stanley (Kiss), Epicentre, Nicke Borg (Backyard Babies) and many others. Well, check and judge yourself!

Just a few weeks left before one of the main cultural events of this year in Sweden - marriage of princess Victoria and Daniel Westling and Stockholm's already preparing for this royal celebration. This Sunday when Sweden will be celebrating National Day (as always with some exciting open-air concerts in Stockholm) 2-weeks festival LOVE Stockholm 2010 will start with different activities all over the city and will finish on 19th June in a day of Victoria's wedding. These days Stockholm will see performances of artists like Darin, Carola, Alexander Rybak, Anna Bergendahl, Timoteij, Salem Al Fakir, Erik Grönwall, Orup, Martin Stenmarck, Moto Boy, Ola, Cookies N Beans, Shirley Clamp, Anne-Lie Rydé, Sanna Nielsen, Fibes, Oh Fibes!, Alice Svensson, Rebound, Nanne, Rigo, Amy Diamond. Check information about festival here and watch trailer of festival with Linda Sundblad's "Making Out" as soundtrack.