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MUSIC

Swedish musician José González thrives on simplicity

In an age when even hard-up musicians can create studio quality from a bedroom, and producers like Timbaland and Mark Ronson are becoming stars of the industry, successful Swedish songwriter José González stands out for his raw simplicity.

Swedish musician José González thrives on simplicity

González’s indie/folk came to the world’s attention in 2005 when his cover version of “Heartbeats” by fellow Swedish band “The Knife” was used in a commercial by Sony BRAVIA which involved the release of 250,000 bouncing balls in the streets of San Francisco.

The exposure helped sales of his debut album “Veneer,” to achieve platinum status in Britain and Sweden, gold in Australia and New Zealand, and double platinum in Ireland.

But the singer, whose Argentinean parents fled to Sweden to escape from Jorge Videla’s military junta in 1977, believes technology is not killing the art of the solo singer/songwriter, as has been suggested.

“Actually, I think the opposite,” he told AFP in an interview.

“Many studios are buying back their analogue equipment to recreate a more authentic sound,” he added.

“Because of the internet you can record things and put them out and you don’t have to go through the whole machinery. You can look like a telephone salesman, and it doesn’t matter. We’ve got the power.”

The Gothenburg-based artist’s second album, “In Our Nature”, was released at the end of last year, and while still characterized by low vocals on top of acoustic folk guitar, has moved away lyrically from the traditional ballad.

“It’s still just me and my guitar, but it is much more about the spirit of trying to get your fist in the air and a move away from the love songs. I think I was very influenced by world events,” he said.

González, who studied for a PhD in biochemistry at the University of Gothenburg, cited “The God Delusion,” written by fellow biologist and prominent atheist Richard Dawkins, as a major influence on the record’s exploration into the primitive aspects of human behaviour.

“It was one of the bases of the album. If people knew more about why we are the way we are, I think we would be better off and would come up with better ways to get along,” he said.

“I know people who don’t want to know, they think if you peer into your brain to see which part of your brain fires when you’re in love, it will take away from the feeling, but I don’t believe that,” he added

“It’s like knowing what kind of spices are in your food. I don’t think it will take away from the feeling of ‘this tastes really good’.

“I think religion is an umbrella for many different subjects and different things will replace these areas, people will learn, and maybe philosophy will replace some areas about how we come to be in the world, how we can live together without believing in supernatural beings.”

By AFP’s James Pheby

CULTURE

New songs mark sixth anniversary of French star Johnny Hallyday’s death

Fans of the late Johnny Hallyday, "the French Elvis Presley", will be able to commemorate the sixth anniversary of his death with two songs never released before.

New songs mark sixth anniversary of French star Johnny Hallyday's death

Hallyday, blessed with a powerful husky voice and seemingly boundless energy, died in December 2017, aged 74, of lung cancer after a long music and acting career.

After an estimated 110 million records sold during his lifetime – making him one of the world’s best-selling singers -Hallyday’s success has continued unabated beyond his death.

Almost half of his current listeners on Spotify are under the age of 35, according to the streaming service, and a posthumous greatest hits collection of “France’s favourite rock’n’roller”, whose real name was Jean-Philippe Leo
Smet, sold more than half a million copies.

The two new songs, Un cri (A cry) and Grave-moi le coeur (Engrave my heart), are featured on two albums published by different labels which also contain already-known hits in remastered or symphonic versions.

Un cri was written in 2017 by guitarist and producer Maxim Nucci – better known as Yodelice – who worked with Hallyday during the singer’s final years.

At the time Hallyday had just learned that his cancer had returned, and he “felt the need to make music outside the framework of an album,” Yodelice told reporters this week.

Hallyday recorded a demo version of the song, accompanied only by an acoustic blues guitar, but never brought it to full production.

Sensing the fans’ unbroken love for Hallyday, Yodelice decided to finish the job.

He separated the voice track from the guitar which he felt was too tame, and arranged a rockier, full-band accompaniment.

“It felt like I was playing with my buddy,” he said.

The second song, Grave-moi le coeur, is to be published in December under the artistic responsibility of another of the singer’s close collaborators, the arranger Yvan Cassar.

Hallyday recorded the song – a French version of Elvis’s Love Me Tender – with a view to performing it at a 1996 show in Las Vegas.

But in the end he did not play it live, opting instead for the original English-language version, and did not include it in any album.

“This may sound crazy, but the song was on a rehearsal tape that had never been digitalised,” Cassar told AFP.

The new songs are unlikely to be the last of new Hallyday tunes to delight fans, a source with knowledge of his work said. “There’s still a huge mass of recordings out there spanning his whole career,” the source said.

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