Swedish~ Stereo~

Even if you didn't hear about Miike Snow undoubtfully you listened to some hits these guys wrote for stars like Kylie Minogue, Madonna, Ms. Dynamite, Britney Spears, Christina Milian, Kelis and Jennifer Lopez.
Miike Snow is relatively young project, just 3 years old, but its songs already have mananaged to get to Brittish charts and soundtracks of American TV-series like Gossip Girl and The Buried Life. Band consists of Andrew Wyatt, Christian Karlsson and Pontus Winnberg, I guess you've met the last two as writing/producing team under the name Bloodshy & Avant (not bad recommendation, right?). Last Autumn guys released their album "Miike Snow" along with some singles like Animal, Black & Blue, Silvia, Burial, Billie Holiday and started promoting their own stuff though you still can see Bloodshy & Avant in credits of some new releases (for example of Sky Ferreira). Soon Miike Snow is going to release deluxe version of debut album that will include new single "The Rabbit" (that was mixed not less than Stuart Price) and some other new tracks. Quite beautiful and original music, you should check them.

Recently Charlotte Perrelli and Magnus Carlsson announced about their plans to record the song devoted to princess Victoria's wedding and Monica & Carl-Axel Dominique were announced as songwriters behind the song. Finally this collaboration turned to be a new maxi-single "Mitt Livs Gemål" containing instrumental and english version ("My Heart's Desire") of the song. Also you can find another song "Tillägnan" (and its instrumental version) classic wedding march written by Monica Dominique and Lars Forsell before, you can listen to the song here. Regarding "Mitt Livs Gemål" as it was supposed it didn't turn to schlager but to classic Swedish big ballad that's gonna be very nice wedding soundtrack and not only for royal couples.

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!

Last Saturday Thomas G:son and Anders Bagge were really on fire competing for Denmark and Azerbaijan in the final of Eurovision-2010 and reaching Top-5, Harry Sommerdahl also helped Georgia to finally reach Top-10 and I hope it will serve as the guarantee of success for Swedish songs next season of contest in pre-selections of other countries. Though not all Swedish songs were lucky enough, Eriksson family for Ireland (23), Fredrik Kempe for Norway (20), Robert Wells for Belarus (24) and Niclas Kings for Iceland (19) unforunately didn't achieve such success in the final but however these songs reached the final and it's already good result for Ireland, Belarus and Iceland which are often followed by bad luck on contest when it comes to qualifying from semifinal so our dear songwriters should be proud of their work. As Swedish songs didn't win pre-selections any time this year I decided to give you a guide to all Swedish songs competing in national finals this year, probably you'll find something interesting that should get its ticket to Oslo but didn't.

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.