Swedish~ Stereo~

Slowly coming back with some music pieces we missed last week I start with the most valuable one.
Velvet have presented video for her latest single "Love Struck" - with a pretty big delay after release but still watching Jenny always warms up Swedish pop-fan's soul with her cool attitude. "Love Struck" has become one of the most underestimated pop-singles of 2011 in Sweden so maybe it's time to push it abroad to remind Europe about Swedish disco-queen?

Oh!!! Velvet is looking gorgeous in behind the scenes video.
We hope it'll come out in its full gloriousness soon and will promote the single that surpsingly had no huge success that it deserved better.

It's Friday night, I barely made it through this week...
I'd like to share with you guys selection of some nice acoustic performances from Efter Tio tv-show which I missed to mention but it feels like it's the right moment to relax and enjoy this beautiful mini-gig with some top Swedish pop-stars like Magnus Carlsson, Pandora, Linda Sundblad, Velvet and Martin Rolinski.

Wonderful Jenny "Velvet" Pettersson is back with new all sorts of amazing single "Love Struck", not that we expected anything less from her.
New track was floating around last months initially as a short sample and remix from 7th heaven, that you can listen to in a full length here and finally we can check original version.
I should say that "Love Struck" is pretty different from all previous Velvet's stuff, it's not so disco oriented, Jenny explores new dance-area this time, first track coming to my mind here is "DJ Got Us Fallin' In Love Again" and it's not gonna disappoint anyone as it's still highest class Swedish pop and when it's Velvet, it just has to be like this.
We missed you, Jenny, we missed you so much!

It's always heart-melting when huge artists make some charity activity releasing new music to help those who really need it. This Autumn Idol-show has made successful shot when show participants released song "All I Need Is You" that reached #2 of Swedish chart and a bit later we've got another release from whole bunch of the loudest names of Swedish pop - Ola, Darin, Alcazar, Jessica Folcker, Sarah Dawn Finer, Plura, Velvet, Hanna Hedlund, Martin Stenmarck, Lasse Berghagen, Anna Maria Espinosa, Claes Janson, Dolly Dolores, Jasmine Kara, Anna Sahlin, Kim Fransson, Promoe and Jakob Hellman. Something incredible? Whole project was initiated by Tess Merkel from Alcazar in collaboration with SOS Barnbyar organization to help kids who lost parents or who live in financialy especially problematic terms. The song "Ta Min Hand", very kind hopeful a bit funky and a bit gospel-breathing track, was written by Christopher Dominique and Mårten Edh and released physically and digitally.
Company around "Ta Min Hand" was also supported by big concert in Kungsträdgården and performances on TV and radio, so below you can watch official video for this song and performance in Efter Tio.

Finally we'd like to present you one of our most beloved Swedish Christmas songs "Merry Christmas" recorded by amazing Jenny "Velvet" Pettersson and Chris Lind (aka Bobby Summer and ex-Barbados) and released on Christmas compilation "Idrottens Julskiva" three years ago. This song doesn't sound like classic song you can expect from this kind of tracks, it starts with blues-verses giving with whistle very special impression of not that white positive Christmas fairytale with only positive characters, it's still faiytale but not that simple fairytale where everything's more complicated like it's in a real life but has a good final or to be more exactly - blasting shiny chorus spreading energy, happiness and Christmas mood with bells, kids singing and crazy cool live arrangement. We love Velvet, we love Christmas and we adore this song! Hope you too, one more time Merry Christmas dear readers and all our best wishes to you!

Velvet has taken part in series of Christmas concerts Julgalan together with Alcazar, Brole, Darin, Pernilla Wahlgren and Hanna Lindblad and look what a great cover of Rihanna she performs there! One of the best dance hits of this year could have not be missed by Swedish dancing queen and it's fitting her perfectly, unfortunately video quality hardly allows to watch performance but sound is recorded quite well to enjoy it. Sure we'd like to get some new stuff from Jenny, earlier this year she released her version of "Stereo Love" and though we're eager to get completely new single we won't refuse to get cover of "Only Girl (In The World)" in studio as well!

Usually I'm not that big fan of mashups but I should undoubtfully share with you what I've found today! About year ago schlager-community have got ultra-tasty mash-up of Charlotte Perrelli's "Hero" and Lady Gaga's "Poker Face" from DJ King Rollo and today I've discovered another few melo-mixes on his youtube channel. I wonder how perfectly suits EMD's "Baby Goodbye" Briney's "If U Seek Amy" and I've got a biiiig smile listening Kelly Clarkson with a low base singing "Sice U Been Gone" along with Sanna Nielsen's "Empty Room" instrumental. But my prize goes to mashup of Lady Gaga's "Love Game" with Velvet's classsics - "Mi Amore", pure brilliance of "Mi Amore"'s arrangement makes Gaga's hit completely epic! All the mixed songs were written by Swedes so maybe that's why amazingness can't work bad with amazingness?
Oh, and another mix I'd like to show you is old good "Hero" mixed with Timbaland's "The Way I Are". Probably you've heard it before but still it's brilliant!

Every year a lot of Swedish artists represent country in two huge Polish festivals in Sopot (both are very spectacular and you can see many European big international stars there). This year plans of both festivals were broken with reconstruction of Opera Leśna which was always a place for these events. However though Sopot Festival had to be cancelled, another one - Sopot Hit Festiwal was moved to Bydgoszcz and surprisingly visually it almost didn't affect beauty of this show featuring such stars like Ameerah, Locnville, Lou Bega, Safri Duo, Tom Boxer and others.
This time we could see Sopot-veteran Velvet on the stage, I think Jenny performed almost all tracks of her second album for the last few years of her participance so now it was turn of "Dancing With Tears In My Eyes" that she presented in a torn bridal veil, not that we know for sure but obviously it was made by her jealous rivals and isn't it great that Jenny was able to show such a flawless vocals and nice performance after it? Another Swedish contestant was Pauline with one of her latest hits "Never Said I Was An Angel", it was sweet and funny performance with Pauline walking around the stage like she came out there ocassionally, she was waving to audience and asked "How are you?", audience obviously felt fine and Pauline probably even better. Third Swedish contestant was newcomer Carina Dahl with debut single "Screw" and this performance was otherwise overfilled with concentration and energy of the singer, Carina looked and sounded like she was ready to tear stadium to pieces, very appreciated confidence for newcomer! Though Poland didn't appreaciate it enough and Carina took 13th place, Pauline - 8th and Velvet - 7th. However Ameerah with Didrik Thott's written "The Sound Of Missing You" won first round of voting with Anders Bagge's written "Drip Drop" by Safura on 5th and final voting was won by another Scandinavians - Safri Duo so let's hope next year will be more successful for Swedes as every year they try to provide really worthy artists and songs.

Another famous Swedish artist competing in Polish music contest these days was Anna Bergendahl who performed her hit "This is my life" at Orange Warsaw Festival and took 3rd place, watch fan's recorder performance here.

As you can remember year before after giving birth to first child Linda Bengtzing has made her comeback on the stage of Liseberg with big schlager-medley of her songs "Alla flickor", "Jag Ljuger Så Bra", "Hur svårt kan det va?" participated in Melodifestivalen. Yesterday audience could get deja-vu watching Linda with this schlager-medley again but this time in a full power and expression she usually provides on the stage of MF, also together with Velvet they performed "Victorious" and it feels like every new performance of this song is stronger and stronger. Velvet as another representive of schlager-royalty couldn't leave audience without her Melodifestivalen-hit and performed "The Queeen" (around 40:00) in all her brilliance. Also you can check performances of another guest-artists Robert Wells and Joel Alme and karaoke with public of Arja Saijonmaa's "Högt över havet" and Ted Gärdestad's "Satellit", "Ain't No Mountain High Enough" and others here.

One of the biggest brightests hopes of Swedish pop-music Linda Pritchard is releasing new single "Miracle" and I extremely need to tell you about her as surprisingly I haven't yet. Being gifted child Linda didn't waste her time and prepared herself for a big career attending Adolf Fredriks Music School and SWAY (dance programme). Soon she was hired by Tess Merkel to Wallmans Salonger and started to work there as singer and dancer. Demand for her talent increased quite fast and Linda was getting offers to work from such well-established artists as Celine Dion, Ace of Base, Andreas Lundstedt and Velvet. In 2006 when Velvet made her debut on Melodifestivalen stage with "Mi Amore" Linda was singing back-vocals behind her. In 2 years Linda appeared on Melodifestivalen again making show for the openning of the final. Later in 2008 she also took participation in casting of Idol and without any doubts she passed it succefully but unfortunately left the show quite fast (Stop, All the man that I need). Though this little unluck was followed by big luck - contract with Warner/Chappell Music and recording her debut album. Already in 2009 she released her first single "Fast Car" (cover of Tracy Chapman's song) and finally was invited to perform on Melodifestivalen-2010 with the song "You're Making Me Hot-Hot-Hot" (demo of this song was performed initially by Sibel, Linda has sent other songs - "Glorious" and "Not Even Halo" which almost reached the contest but was left near qualification border) and Linda took this mission really seriously showing all amazingness of her talent, vocals and choreographic skills with fantastic show and great song from schlager-veterans Tobias Lundgren, Johan Fransson and Tim Larsson. Though the song didn't reach the final it reached the highest chart-position (#8) from all songs not qualified to the final and not less than 4 of 10 finalists.
Now after a lot of Spring touring around country Linda is ready for a new amazing single "Miracle" and she already performed it at Sommarkrysset few weeks ago with all her drive, power and perfectness, now it's officially out!

Magnus Carlsson releases new single "Feel You" - another amazing disco-anthem from Pitchline sounding like brother of Velvet's "Take My Body Close", Pitchline being young production company has recommended itself like a great team releasing high-level stuff with Velvet, Alice Svensson, Kick and Magnus. Single includes some nice mixes from Pitchline and Ruff & Jam and b-side "Take Me To Your Heart" another dance track obviously inspired by music of Modern Talking (seems like Man Meadow has got a serious rival).

If you didn't hear the story of this song it's quite simple but touching. Last year schlager-daddy Thomas G:Son gave a birth to the new schlager-anthem and has sent it to Melodifestivalen - the place where all (almost all) schlagers become legends but evil people didn't accept it and threw it out. How dramatical! Well, as long as this world has some hot schlager hearts beating these stories still can finish with happy ends. Two schlager-moms Linda Bengtzing and Jenny "Velvet" Pettersson adopted this pure child and has made it as glorious as only these faboulous ladies can. The story goes and we've got new really nice mix of this song!

As it happens every year this summer we'll be able to catch many open-air tv-performances on Swedish TV, probably it won't bring as much joy to pop-followers as attendance of famous Rix-FM festival and if you come to Sweden in closer few months I extremely recommend you to visit it. Well, those who can't visit Sweden can follow shows like Sommarkrysset, Allsång på Skansen and Lotta på Liseberg (to name a few). Yesterday we could see first show Sommarkrysset this year from park Gröna Lund in Stockholm and it has given us premiere of Orup's new single "Tiden Bara Gick", spring hit of this year "Manboy" by Eric Saade and performance of Swedish pop-queens Velvet and Linda Bengtzing with "Victorious" in all their fabolousness and amazingness with guest performance of the winner of Brittish X-Factor Alexandra Burke, not less than EMD were the hosts of the show yesterday and next week show will be hosted by fröken Bengtzing with performance of Timoteij, Eric Gadd and Rebound.