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Ten Swedish bands that’ll knock your socks off

Think you know what's hot on the Swedish music scene? While the jurors with the Swedish Grammis music awards had their say earlier this week, contributor Charlotte Webb has compiled a list of the ten best contemporary Swedish musical acts.

Published: 16 February 2012 15:14 CET

Ten Swedish bands that'll knock your socks off

Swedish singer-songwriter sensations First Aid Kit

Forget Abba and Ace of Base. In the last decade, Swedish pop music has moved firmly onto the world stage with an innovative variety of new voices and styles, ranging from experimental electronica to contemporary jazz, folk, indie and beyond.

Click here to see a list of ten Swedish bands that’ll knock your socks off

On Tuesday, two of the musicians on The Local’s top ten list pulled in Grammis, the Swedish equivalent to the Grammy Awards, with the Deportees winning for Rock Group of the Year and Lykke Li taking home two of the most coveted awards: Artist of the Year and Album of the Year.

Lykke Li’s video for “Get Some” from 2010

Deportees’ video for “When They Come” from 2009

Swedish House Mafia was recognized as the Swedish act that had achieved the greatest international success, while UK pop sensation Adele, who picked up six Grammy awards, was honoured with the Swedish Grammi for best international album.

With the Swedish trade minister hoping to double the export of Swedish music by 2015, now is the time to take a closer look at some of the most interesting acts to grace the Swedish stage in recent years.

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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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