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Björk to headline Denmark’s Northside festival 25 years after Aarhus debut

Icelandic icon Björk will appear at the 2018 Northside festival in Aarhus.

Björk to headline Denmark’s Northside festival 25 years after Aarhus debut
File photo: Frank Franklin II/AP/Ritzau

The festival’s spokesperson John Fogde described landing the 51-year-old artist as a “fantastic feeling”.

“This is a name we have had on our wish list for many years. She is unique, both musically and in her visual performance,” Fogde said.

“Every single show she does is different from the last,” Fogde added.

The popular Icelandic singer’s appearance in Aarhus next summer will mark 25 years since she last performed in the city, when she played at Aarhus Fest Week shortly after the release of her first solo album Debut.

“It’s a lucky coincidence for us that it lands on the 25-year anniversary of what was a legendary concert in Aarhus. It’s perfect for us to be able to mark that,” Fogde said.

The Northside spokesman said that, despite her longevity, Björk was also a name that would attract younger music fans.

“She is the type that people will always listen to. Every album brings her new fans while holding on to the old ones, because she is always evolving so much. This is in no way a nostalgia act, because she is just as relevant today as she has ever been,” he said.

Björk last appeared in Denmark at the 2012 Roskilde Festival.

She is set to release a new album, Utopia, at the end of this month, following 2015’s highly-rated Vulnicura.

Björk will play at the Aarhus festival on June 7th next year, joining the likes of Father John Misty, The National and Queens of the Stone Age on the programme.

SEE ALSO: VIDEO: Festivalgoers praise 'forward-thinking', organic Northside

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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