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Watch Sweden’s Seinabo Sey in ‘Beyonce’ power statement

Sweden's star soul singer invited 130 black and mixed race women on stage with her at the Nordic nation's Grammy Awards in a move compared with Beyonce's Superbowl appearance.

Published: 25 February 2016 11:46 CET
Updated: 25 February 2016 14:39 CET
Watch Sweden's Seinabo Sey in 'Beyonce' power statement
A screenshot of her performance (left) and the star arriving at the event (right). Photo: Jonas Ekströmer/TT
Dressed in a black belted leather jacket and tight black trousers, the star began singing acapella under a spotlight. The stage then lit up as the women walked in from the wings to join her as the beat kicked in, with the crowd cheering as they realized what was happening.
 
As her guests remained still and silent, the Swedish-Gambian performer, 25, who is one of the Nordic nation's most successful music exports in recent years, belted out the lyrics to her 2015 track 'Easy'. The words include “Shoulder to shoulder, I know it could be easy, yeah” and “What would the world be, if we let it be just fine”.
 
She then segued into her international hit 'Hard Times', receiving a standing ovation as she wrapped up her appearance, which was shown live on Swedish public service broadcaster SVT.
 
 
Swedes rushed to social media to compare Sey's move to Beyonce's apparent political statement at the US Superbowl halftime show earlier this month, when she emerged flanked by black female back-up dancers dressed in the style of the civil rights group the Black Panthers while her own jacket appeared to echo one of Michael Jackson's famous outfits from the 1990s.
 
 
However the Swede said she wanted people to make up their own minds about her motives.
 
“I started with my closest friends, and then they were allowed to bring as many others with them as there was space for on the stage,” she told Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter.
 
“The whole thing that I was up there trying to convey is that people should use common sense to think and interpret things themselves.”
 
She said that she was not trying to promote a “trend to talk about black people's rights in society”, explaining that she was rather “inspired by the injustices in the world”.
 
“On the other hand. I do everything Beyonce tells me to do,” the singer added, with a laugh.
 
Sey's statement comes as immigration and integration remain among the most debated issues in Sweden, after the country took in record numbers of refugees in 2015, but then decided to re-introduce border checks after local authorities said they were struggling to manage the influx.

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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