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WHAT'S ON IN SWEDEN

MUSIC

What’s on in Sweden: June 18th – 25th

Sweden's most talked-about music event is here, as is an annual festival for fans of the original master of Nordic Noir. That's on top of a holiday that will see even your normally quiet Swedish friends turned into party animals.

Published: 18 June 2015 08:00 CEST
What's on in Sweden: June 18th - 25th
Sweden's favourite sing-along show, Allsång på Skansen. Photo: Janerik Henriksson/TT

Sweden's most popular music festival is not Eurovision. It's the televised sing-along show Allsång på Skansen, which will see thousands of people flock to Stockholm's outdoor museum Skansen every Tuesday for the rest of the summer. 

The season kicks off on Tuesday June 23rd, with one of Sweden's most iconic stars, Carola, performing on stage alongside southern Swedish country singer Hasse Andersson and hip hop fusion band Panetoz.

If you can't make it to Stockholm, watch the show live on SVT from 8pm. And don't forget to impress your Swedish friends by revealing you know that Eurovision 2015 winner Måns Zelmerlöw used to host the show just a few years ago. He will also visit the show the week after next, so put that in your diary.


Sweden's Måns Zelmerlöw before his Eurovision days. Photo: Claudio Bresciani/SCANPIX

The Volvo Ocean Race will set sail in Gothenburg in western Sweden on Sunday, June 21st, bringing to an end the round-the-world boat race which started in Alicante in October last year. This final leg of the journey will see the competition conclude with an in-port race in the entrance to Gothenburg harbour a week later. By that time the seven boats will have visited 10 ports around the world, covering a total of 39,000 nautical miles. Admission is free. 

Every year, fans of world famous Swedish director Ingmar Bergman gather on a small island called Fårö, north of the larger island of Gotland off the east coast of Sweden. This year's 'Bergman Week' kicks off on Monday, June 22nd. Guided tours, music and film showings will be on offer to celebrate the director behind classics such as 'The Seventh Seal' and 'Fanny and Alexander'.

Oh, and of course there's Midsummer's Eve on Friday, when Swedes, as the tradition goes, will gather in large groups to eat raw fish, drink copious amounts of home-made vodka and dance round a big phallus while pretending to be little frogs. Read our handy guide below.

GUIDE: The Local's guide to Midsummer madness

Done? If that hasn't scared you off one of Sweden's biggest holidays, check your local council's website to see what they have put on for you this June 19th. The most traditional celebrations usually take place in the Dalarna region, with folk costumes and all, but there will be events all over the country. Here's what's going on in Gothenburg, Malmö and Stockholm.

Looking for more things to do in Sweden? Check out our interactive guide below.

 

 

 

 

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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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