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ROYAL WEDDING

MUSIC

Avicii’s mum spills beans on royal wedding DJ set

Swedish superstar DJ Avicii is set to perform at the upcoming royal wedding in Stockholm this summer, if his mother is to be believed.

Published: 8 May 2015 16:48 CEST
Avicii's mum spills beans on royal wedding DJ set
Avicii performing in Stockholm in 2014. Photo: TT
Prince Carl Philip himself has allegedly been in touch with Sweden's most famous DJ, to ask him to provide the evening entertainment at his wedding to former reality television star Sofia Hellqvist.
 
“I know nothing more than that he will play,” his mother Anki Lidén told Swedish tabloid Aftonbladet.
 
Avicii, whose real name is Tim Bergling, lives in a luxury house in Los Angeles, but hails from Stockholm and is a regular visitor to his home country.
 
With hits including 'Wake Me Up' and 'Hey Brother', he has a huge setlist to choose from should the rumours about his performance turn out to be true.
 
However Aftonbladet's coverage of the upcoming royal wedding has not always been accurate. The paper printed the couple's supposed guest list last month, before hastily retracting it after Royal Palace press officer Margareta Thorgren told Swedish media magazine Resumé via text message that the list was inaccurate.
 
“They have probably compiled this list based on previous guest lists. We have not published any guest lists,” she said.
 
Several members of the Swedish royal family are rumoured to be big Avicii fans and the star's 'Hey Brother' track has even been performed outside the Royal Palace by The Royal Swedish Army Band.
 
 
Prince Philip has dated Sofia Hellqvist since January 2013. She is a former fashion model who famously participated in the scandalous TV series Paradise Hotel.
 
The couple met in 2009 at a club in Stockholm's posh Stureplan district. They have lived together on the island of Djurgården since 2011.
 
The wedding schedule will get underway on Friday June 12th, when the couple's friends and family will be invited to a private evening dinner, a statement from the court revealed last month.
 
The following day, Saturday June 13th, a legally binding church service will take place in the Royal Chapel at the Royal Palace in Stockholm, starting at 4.30pm.
 
An evening banquet followed by dancing is set to take place in Karl XI's Gallery in the Royal Palace.

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.

Published: 17 November 2023 09:05 CET
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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