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.

I keep telling you about some exciting Melodifestivalen demos (though Melodifastivalen demo is always exciting thing, no matter if it sounds better or worse than final version) and this time I guess about one I couldn't even imagine we will ever hear because this song is due to my own opinion best Melodifestivalen song ever!
I'm talking about Charlotte Perrelli's "Hero" - winning song of Melodifestivalen-2008 written by Fredrik Kempe and Bobby Ljunggren. If you remember studio-version had 2 backing vocalists - Anna Nordell (who was left behind stage on Melodifestivalen) and Agnetha Kjörsvik (who was sent to Belgrade with Charlotte to sing behind the stage as well).
But probably you didn't know that it was Agnetha Kjörsvik (ex-vocalist of Freebee) who was singing on demo of "Hero" before Charlotte started working with it and the song has got Bassflow production, now you can listen to it yourself!
My opinion about this version - I love it!!! Sure, song wouldn't pretend to win without Petter Boström arrangement that turned it to schlager-heaven and Charlotte with all her attitude, story and personality in common, but when you heard track like thousand times it's definitely cool to look at this from completely different side with rockier sound and Agnetha's emotional, powerful and really beautiful vocal.

I hope no one's against starting morning with rush of schlager-energy with Charlotte Perrelli becoming guest of Den Flygande Mattan.
Charlotte has performed her main (no, due to us it's not "Tusen Och En Natt" though we love it as well) hit "Hero" and as it usually goes in this show piece of classic Swedish retro-music - Siw Malmkvist's song "Flickor Bak I Bilen".

Charlotte Perrelli, Malena Ernman and Sissela Kyle are back with their successful concert-programme that they premiered year ago in Berwaldhallen (Stockholm) - no need to tell that concerts were sold out and this year they were performing it again 2 days for Norrköping's audience so people could enjoy hits of both Malena and Charlotte, humoristic acts of Sisella and many other funny performances. You can check full setlist here and I would like to put your attention on the most lovely piece of this programme - Charlotte singing "Hero" with orchestra - what a powerful and graceful performance! Duet of Malena and Charlotte singing "Tell Him" also worth watching.

Recently Charlotte revealed on her blog that she's planning new album for next Spring-early Summer, quite exciting news as last studio-album "Hero" (not counting Christmas album "Rimfrostjul") was real pop-heaven! By the way I'm not sure you saw gorgeous cover of first Charlotte's huge release with band Wizex so here it is, the album "Mot nya mål", looks amazing doesn't it?

I should also give you a tip about recently released video for South African star Patricia Lewis who has made a cover for "Hero". Eurovision and Melodifestivalen covers are quite popular among South African artists so from time to time we get some interesting works and now you can check example of one.

New season of popular summer TV-show "Lotta på Liseberg" has just started and yesterday public could enjoy first set of this programme with loads of old favorite Swedish hits and some own songs of three brilliant artists invited as guests - Charlotte Perrelli, Lisa Nilsson and Markoolio. In common about the show - it started 6 years ago by popular singer Lotta Engberg and during the show guest-artists make sing-a-long performance coming down to the audience to sing some beloved classics with them (this is what conquering SVT's show "Allsång på Skansen" is also about). Apart from all these stars-karaoke performances schlager-queen Charlotte Perrelli sang her pop-anthem "Hero" and "Summer Nights" (from Grease musical), beautiful Lisa Nilsson performed her old hit "Varje gång jag ser dig" and new song "I samma andetag" (that was released on her recent compilation "20 - En jubileumssamling") and Markoolio provided few of his pretty big hits - "Ingen sommar utan reggae" and "Sommar och sol". Another amazing performance was Schlagerkavalkad when all three artists were singing part of their Melodifestivalen entries - Charlotte - "Tusen och en natt", Lisa - "Du (öppnar min värld)" and Markoolio - "Värsta schlagern" (though it didn't qualify to MF but became very popular however). Next week we'll see Robert Wells, Linda Bengtzing, Joel Alme and Velvet on the stage of Liseberg.

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.