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Lukas Graham sets Danish record on Billboard chart

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Published: 11 April 2016 09:26 CEST

Lukas Graham sets Danish record on Billboard chart

Lukas Graham. PR photo

The flamboyant Mr. Kardashian and the bearded country crooner are the only two acts to top Lukas Graham in this week’s Billboard 200 albums chart.

The Danish band debuted at number three on the album charts with their self-titled US debut, also called ‘The Blue Album’, moving 59,000 units.

With the third place finish, Lukas Graham is now the highest-placing Danish act ever, Ekstra Bladet reported. No other Danish act has made it to the top five, although Aqua and Volbeat have managed to crack the top ten.

On the singles chart, the four-piece’s smash hit ‘7 Years’ is still at number two behind Rihanna’s ‘Work’ but was the week’s biggest gainer in digital sales and in airplay.

The only other Danish musical act to match Lukas Graham’s second place ranking on the singles chart is Jørgen Ingemann, whose 1961 hit ‘Apache’ peaked one spot from the top.

While Lukas Graham is currently riding the wave of success in the US, Danish fans will have the chance to see their homegrown hero in June when the band plays the NorthSide and Tinderbox festivals as well as stadium shows in Copenhagen and Aalborg.

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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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