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Thirteen 2015 anthems that come from Sweden

After what's been extraordinary year for great Swedish music, The Local's music writer Paul Connolly tried to pick his top 10 tracks. But he just couldn't shorten his list from 13.

Thirteen 2015 anthems that come from Sweden
Swedish star Elliphant's track Loves Me Badder was one of the best this year. Photo: Fredrik Persson/TT

1. Elias – Revolution

This slender 19-year-old Swede looks like Eminem's son but has the kind of dark, rich soulful voice usually associated with great age and heft. He is surely destined for bigger things – this was the best song of the year by a Swedish mile.

2. Kate Boy – Midnight Sun

This Swedish-Australian duo released a terrific debut album in November and the sleek, gleaming pop juggernaut would have been song of any year in which Elias hadn’t released Revolution.

3. Pale Honey – Youth

This was proof that Swedes can also marry their unquestionable melodic suss to fuzzed-up, abrasive guitars and galumphing drums and still sound ineffably cool.

4. Dante – Champagne Problems ft Adiam

Dante was a drummer with indie hopefuls, The Concretes. This was a huge step up, an endlessly inventive and supremely melodic blend of electronica and R&B.

5. Rebecca & Fiona – Sayonara

The impossibly glamorous Rebecca & Fiona have long threatened to make great pop songs and they’re now finally coming up with the goodies.

6. Tove Styrke – Ego

Tove Styrke from Umeå in northern Sweden didn't make quite the same mainstream impact in America as her felllow Swede Tove Lo, but she still caught the ear of the cool college crowd. Ego is pure, perfect pop.

7. The Weekend – Can't Feel My Face

One of the biggest songs of the year was penned by Swedish producer Max Martin. Only Paul McCartney and John Lennon have written more US number ones. This Michael Jackson-esque classic for Canadian singer, The Weekend, was his second of 2015; the first was Taylor Swift's Bad Blood.

8. Zara Larsson – Lush Life

Larsson may have only just turned 18 but she's already a veteran of the Swedish charts, with three number ones, including two this year. America will surely be next for Sweden's Rihanna.

9. Anders Enda Barnet – This City Is Dark And Silent

Anders Enda Barnet is the solo project of singer and pianist Anders Göransson. On the basis of this debut single he sounded like a Swedish blend of Bruce Springsteen and Brian Wilson. This is a good thing. 

10. Frida Sundemo – Keep An Eye On Me

Spinetingling, beautiful and almost impossibly melancholic, Keep An Eye On Me also manages to be both optimistic and hopeful. Sundemo is a major Swedish talent.

11. Elliphant – Loves Me Badder

Ellinor Olovsdotter, daughter of Stockholm, may sound ridiculous singing “Your gangsta ways turn me on” while a cartoonish rapper rasps “gangsta” in the background but her fantastic songwriting somehow validates her preposterousness. Fame edges ever closer for this pop pachyderm.

12. Nadia Nair – Beautiful Poetry

Nair may have not made even the smallest dent on the consciousness of the Swedish public but this earworm of a song has rarely left my head all year – more hooks than a Peter Pan convention.

13. Death Team – So Fresh

This duo snagged the attention of hipsters worldwide by dint of their debut, Fuckin' Bitches In The Hood. However, So Fresh is a much more rounded, tune-stuffed song – it still bears their trademark sly humour but is much less gimmicky. 

Watch all thirteen videos here and listen to Paul Connolly's bumper 40-song selection of the best Swedish songs of the year 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.

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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