Swedish~ Stereo~

Annual Idrottsgalan is back with a bunch of some top-artist who were with us during last year and seems like are going to be next year too.
We've got big voice trio of Sonja Aldén, Linda Pritchard and Anna Sahlene with "Higher & Higher", Lisa Miskovsky who sounded...hm, pretty unusual in Sting's "Fields of Gold" (but it was pretty emotional performance in memory of some Swedish sportsmen who died in 2011), Markoolio with his own song "In med bollen" and company of Lili and Susie, Hammerfall with Judas Priest's "Breaking the Law" (they're doing pretty loads of TV lately, are we gonna get them on MF soon?), Louise Hoffsten with her own old song "Let the best man win" and The Clash's "London Calling" performed by Nicke Borg who has become much more actively interacting with audience since last spring. Thanks for the tip about event to Schlagerfiasko that you absolutely must follow when ESC-season is at full speed.

Taking part in shooting for charity calendars has become an amazing tradition among Swedish musicians.
Last year I told you about Caroline Roosmark's calendar. If you haven't heard about it - it's made for charity collecting some biggest Swedish celebritites who participate for free. This year all income will be aimed to help children living in families with the only one parent and low budget. We've got not so many pop-artists - it was only Sanna Nielsen, Ulrik Munther and Marie Fredriksson this year but their images have become as impressive as we use to see in Caroline's works. You can check calendar and order it here.
Alsoe you can find another great calendar with loads of well-known faces of pop-music (Eric Saade, Danny, Loreen, Sara Varga, The Moniker, Nicke Borg, Martin Rolinski, Adam Tensta, Lisa Miskovsky) helping two organizations - Friends (against bullying in schools) and Naturskyddsföreningen (ecology organisation) here. And don't miss some videos of making it.

New post-Melodifestivalen video is unleashed and now it's turn of Nicke Borg to present his work. This year Nicke was one of melo-sensations qualifying to the final and making Top-10 hit with the song "Leaving Home" co-written by him with Jojo Borg Larsson, Fredrik Thomander and Anders "Gary" Wikström. Just like the song video is dark and minimalistic with hologram Nicke used on the stage during his performance. Also recently Nicke has visited XL-Live to perform "Leaving Home" in acoustic and you can check this performance below as well.

It's getting closer to Melodifestivalen, artists are announced and get prepared to contest but two of songs were still not known - song of Love Generation (I'll remind you that they haven't chosen which song they'll perform at Melodifestivalen and they still hasn't defined) and song replacing disqualified song of Anders Fernete "Don't Stop", SVT gave a week to Anders to find another song and he has found it!
Song is titled "Run" and it's written by Desmond Child, Negin Djafari, Hugo Lira, Ian-Paolo Lira and Thomas Gustafsson and described as uptempo song (not less than "Don't Stop", logically, "Don't Stop", "Run", it's gonna be dynamic) that was originally intended to become Celin Dion's single but it never happened. The most exciting part here is Desmond Child name - man behind some real world classic hits of Bon Jovi ("Livin' on a Prayer"), Alice Cooper ("Poison"), Aerosmith ("Crazy"), Billie Myers ("Kiss the Rain"), Ricky Martin ("Livin' La Vida Loca", "The Cup of Life", "She Bangs"), Katy Perry ("Waking Up in Vegas"), impressive? The rest of songwriting gang worked together as Random for Agnes, Jill Johnson, Dannii Minogue and Miley Cyrus. They also wrote/produced some hits for Anders ("Alone", "If It's All I Ever Do", "Without You") before but it's all Backstreet Boys meet Bryan Adams ballad stuff Anders used to do before that we due to description of the song are not gonna get this time.

Talking about news of other participants.

We've finally could check what Rasmus Viberg is about, and below you can listen how he sounds. We can't define anything for now but the one thing is clear, Rasmus is going to sound very original in the contest, something between Maroon 5 and male kind of Anastacia.

Nicke Borg who is currently trying his solo career apart from Backyard Babies released solo EP "Homeland - Chapter 1" that you can check here and single representing it is "Confessions Of A Criminal Mind" that you can listen below, nice calm rock-ballad, in common EP leaves impression of mixed thoughtful rock-ballads and country sound. Pleasant but we expect much more explosive stuff from Nicke on Melodifestivalen.

Caroline Roosmark - one of the most famous photographers of country is publishing brand new calendar "Men and Women of The Year". Every year she delievers utterly inspiring collection of photos presenting the most popular musicians, jornalists, actors and other famous people in some marvelous images you can hardly imagine in and this time we've got another amazing collection of her works released in collaboration with project helping children raised by lonely parents in difficult financial terms. Everything's arranged in strict budget limits as no one gets paid and take participation on a good will but feels like collection of real photo-masterpieces, isn't it great to see Darin as Oliver Twist, Anna Bergendahl as Thumbelina or Helen Sjöholm as Mata Hari? Among others you can also see Nanne, Nicke Borg, Rikard Wolff, Charlotte Kalla and many other well-known names.
Check previous calendars and order new calendar helping kids and getting this piece of art with some beloved Swedish celebrities on the site of Caroline.

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.