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MUSIC

The Local’s top Swedish songs of August

The Local's music guru, Paul Connolly, has picked out Sweden's hottest new music to guide you through the rest of summer. Here's a selection of August's best tracks.

Published: 8 August 2015 09:00 CEST
The Local's top Swedish songs of August
Kate Boy have made one of the singles of the year. Photo: Promo

1. Kate Boy – Midnight Sun

This Stockholm band recorded one of 2012's best songs, Northern Lights, but fell away slightly thereafter. Midnight Sun, however, is a magnificent, full-blooded return to form, all muscular, precise electro funk and soaring melodies. Song of the year so far.

2. Seinabo Sey – Pretend

Another funk-driven electro classic. Sey may never eclipse the marvellous Younger but Pretend comes mighty close.

3. Tove Styrke – Baby One More Time

Styrke, who came 3rd in Swedish Idol in 2009, is roughly 20,000 times more interesting than the usual wannabe pop star detritus. And this cover of Britney's 1998 hit is fantastic – dark, sexy and exciting.

4. Robyn & La Bagatelle Magique – Set Me Free

Another track from Robyn's most recent collaboration and it's an instant stomping dancefloor classic.

5. Mariette – My Revolution

The official song of this year's Pride is an inspired choice – anthemic, inclusive and danceable.

6. Raye – Like Nobody Else

Don't know a great deal about this Stockholm singer/songwriter other than she's 21 and has a fabulously dramatic voice. An excellent debut.

7. Meel – Prisoner

Swedish songwriter Malin Johansson's first solo single is almost unremarkable electro R&B until the dark, melancholic chorus kicks in and sends the tingles down your spine.

8. MIYNT – Civil War

Not sure how many people will be trying to track down an artist called MINTY on iTunes or at their local record store once her deeply addictive brand of trip-hop catches on, but catch on it will.

9. Molly Pettersson Hammar – Something Right

Big, bold brash pop doesn't come much punchier than this. In your face.

10. Frida Sundemo – Stay Young

Another slice of winsome elegance from Gothenburg's Sundemo. We wait, impatiently, for her debut album.

11. Ida Redig – It Ain’t Easy

Hugely reminiscent of Depeche Mode’s Just Can’t Get Enough but that’s no bad thing. Perfect late summer fare.

12. Red Mecca – Skin

I somehow missed this in July. If you want your pop darker than an Arctic winter, try Skin's brooding majesty.

Listen here to the July playlist on Spotify and watch the videos on YouTube here.
 

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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