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MØ has biggest Danish Billboard hit in 60 years

The Danish pop singer MØ has scored Denmark’s biggest Billboard hit in more than half a century, topping even 90s club staple ‘Barbie Girl’.

Published: 7 August 2015 13:35 CEST
Updated: 7 August 2015 15:23 CEST
MØ has biggest Danish Billboard hit in 60 years
Mø performing at Smukfest on Thursday. Photo: Axel Schütt/Scanpix
With Major Lazer and MØ’s hit song ‘Lean On’ at number six on the Billboard Hot 100 list, the Danish singer has become the highest-placed Danish artist on the charts since Jørgen Ingmann’s 1961 song ‘Apache’ – considered to be one of the greatest instrumental guitar songs of all time – hit number two on the list. 
 
The international profile of MØ, whose real name is Karen Marie Ørsted and who hails from the island of Funen, is clearly rising. In addition to the Billboard feat, she was also recently featured as one of Rolling Stone magazine’s ‘artists you need to know’ and has performed at a string of high-profile international music festivals. She also appeared on Saturday Night Live alongside Iggy Azalea back in October, although that particular performance did not turn out so well. 
 
 
MØ’s record label Sony wrote in a press release that ‘Lean On’ has already been streamed more than 324 million times on Spotify alone and has topped the hit charts in countries including Denmark, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland and the Netherlands. 
 
The song’s spot at number six on Billboard puts it one slot higher than the inescapable 1997 song ‘Barbie Girl’ from Danish group Aqua. 
 
Hear 'Lean On' here, followed by Ingmann’s 1961 song ‘Apache and ‘Barbie Girl’. 

 

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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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