Swedish~ Stereo~

Roxette are ready to come back and dates for new single and new album are already revealed!
First band's single since 2007 "She's Got Nothing on (But the Radio)" will be released on January 10th and the first studio album since 2001 "Charm School" will be out month later on February 11st so it's just few weeks before we'll get some completely new music from Roxette. Press-release was already unleashed and look what we can discover about new tracks from it.

"They do it with ”Charm School”, a new album with twelve songs in a style that’s best described as “updated classic Roxette”, from the initial power pop fireworks of ”Way Out” to the bittersweet closer ”Sitting On Top Of The World”.
The sensitive ballad “In My Own Way”, for example, is a rediscovered gem from 1984, when the dream of international recognition still was just a dream.
The newest song is the extremely infectious groove-master ”She’s Got Nothing On (But The Radio)”, written this autumn. In-between there’s everything that has made Roxette one of the world’s most radio played pop groups; the clinging melodies, the passionate delivery, the humorous pop sense and the unique mix of Marie Fredriksson’s and Per Gessle’s voices. All wrapped up in a musical package that is unmistakably 2011."

Check whole press-release here and below you can watch Roxette's performance from series of European concerts Night of the Proms held in 2009 when Roxette has taken part in this tour.

One of the most aesthetically beautiful debuts of the year is delievered by fresh project Lavin with single "Away For The Summer".
Hampus Öfwerman and Martin Norström are halves of rock-duo Lavin from Taby playing mostly some classic forms of teen-rock and looking for their own style and probably they've found it with "Away For The Summer" - beautiful modern piano-based ballad with beat we'd like to compare with Ryan Tedder style but we won't as original melody in melancholic but warm style with dramatic vocal line in heartbreaking manner of male Imogen Heap makes whole pack sounding like nothing we can compare with but it's definitely breakthrough in Swedish music, something unique we'd like to get more and hopefully it's not the last time we hear about this band.
You can check some other Lavin's songs on their Myspace page and watch video for "Away For The Summer" below, but I'll recommend you to listen song before - it has better quality and it's a song you should better get by ears than by eyes.

Next week final of Idol-2010 will be held in Stockholm's Globen and who will take part in final duel will be decided already this week. It was revealed today that winning song is written by Christian Walz who will participate in Melodifestivalen-2011 and three left Idol-contestants have already recorded their studio-versions of this song.
Unfortunately we haven't got neither full video nor superb quality performances on youtube like we used to but thankfully we've got some to judge what happened on the show. Quite weird that second show there are no performances of Linnea on youtube. Does it mean anything? I guess it doesn't mean no one is interested in her but why don't we have performances of the most spectacular artist of Idol-2010 on youtube?!
However I should reveal from the beginning this week we've lost Linnea who has got to duel with Minnah and hasn't stood the fight. Big loss for the contest but there were no weak contestants left. But Minnah, let's check what she was about. First she performed new hit from Bruno Mars' "Just the way you are" that could't be called weak but wasn't any close to some Minnah's previous highlights. Next song Heart's "Alone" supposed to be more proper for Minnah's voice and this time she did everything as strong as it had to be with great rock-manner in choruses and amazing schlager-attitude. Olle seemed to be another lucky with song choise. U2's "Beautiful Day" sounded not less explosive than in Eddie Razzaz's performance year ago, though sometimes it felt like Olle fought with his voice and moving from weak place to perfect one. Another Olle's cover was for Coldplay's "Fix you" - already his second on the show and again it has got a huge audience reaction. Contest's favorite Jay Smith performed Simple Minds' ballad "Don't you forget about me" that suited his massive rock-voice perfectly and has shown what we should expect from winning performance in Globen next week. Gaga's "Bad Romance" unexpectedly sounded not so interesting, probably we've heard too many covers of this song so it sounded not more than stable.
Second compilation of Idol was already released and here you can check whole tracklist, most interesting tracks in my opinion are Minnah's "Piece Of My Heart", Linnea's "Hope There's Someone", Alice's "Breakaway", Elin's "Hang With Me", Jay's "Heart-Shaped Box", Daniel's "High and Dry" and Linda Varg's "Iris". Have I listed too much? Because tracklist is truly great!

Day before new album release E.M.D. unleash their new video for "There’s A Place For Us" - song that's going to be Swedish bonus-goodies for soundtrack of "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader". It was pretty amazing idea to collect some biggest young pop-artists from different countries to get more attention to movie in some exact regions so Joe McElderry, Sergey, Sonohra and others have got this song originally made by Carrie Underwood to be covered.
Talking about video it's as most of soundtrack videos is mostly made by formula - cut of best movie's moments (and this cut looks quite epic as whole movie should be) and band singing and posing in decorations composed in a theme of movie. It's minimalistic but it's like it supposed to be so we don't complain. However song is very strong and classic-sounding soundtrack starting from ballad intro and growing till the end to blast, dramatic bridge, slowing down tempo and even stronger blast again. We should remember that guys are from Idol-show so they know how to make Idol-ballad sound properly. Watch the video right below.

Few words about new album titled "Rewind". Except Top-3 single "Save Tonight", "What Is Love" (that hasn't managed to enter chart, unbelieavable!) and "There’s A Place For Us" it will include covers for Coolio ("Gangsta's Paradise"), Fools Garden ("Lemon Tree"), Alanis Morissette ("Ironic") and also international hit-single of Swedish band The Wannadies "You and me song", guys performed it this Summer so you can check it below.

We send our warmest congratulations to Robyn who's got to the list of nominees for 53rd Grammy awards that will be held on 13 February 2011 at the Staples Center in Los Angeles. Robyn has got nominee in category Best Dance Recording for single "Dancing On My Own" and will fight for the victory with Goldfrapp ("Rocket"), La Roux ("In For The Kill"), Lady Gaga ("Dance In The Dark") and Rihanna ("Only Girl (In The World)"). Though getting to nominee is already big victory as many European artists can only dream about it but for Robyn with her heavy promotion in U.S. year touring, performing at VMA and breaking to American radiostations and dancefloors and reaching Top-100 of albums chart with both first parts of "Body Talk" it was fairly to be rewarded by American most respectable awards. Swedish RedOne is also in nominee for the Best Producer so next March Melodifestivalen can get project of Best Producer of the planet and hope Sweden will appreciate it.
Back to Robyn. Recently she has performed at MySpace Secret Show presenting massive set of her latest best hits and you can already check whole event yourself at least just to realize what a hit machine this woman is.