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Zara Larsson wins big at music awards gala

Swedish pop star Zara Larsson was awarded "artist of the year" at the country's biggest music gala. Listen to some of the winners below.

Published: 9 February 2018 07:59 CET
Updated: 9 February 2018 11:06 CET

Zara Larsson wins big at music awards gala

Zara Larsson performing at the Nobel Peace Prize concert last year. Photo: Berit Roald/NTB scanpix/TT

Twenty-year-old Larsson took home three gongs in total at the Grammis Awards – the Swedish equivalent of the Grammy Awards – held at the Grand Hotel in Stockholm on Thursday night.

Her album 'So Good' was named album of the year and mega hit 'Only You' song of the year. Then the supernova pop star also claimed the prize for artist of the year for the second consecutive year.

Outspoken pop icon Larsson had her first big hit with 'Lush Life' in 2015 and has gone on to become one of Sweden's most famous stars on the international stage.

“It feels incredibly great. I'm one of all the cool Grammis winners,” she said via a web link.

READERS' TIPS: The songs that will get you to Swedish fluency fast

Zara Larsson addressing the Grammis Awards. Photo: Christine Olsson/TT

Stockholm-born pop queen Tove Lo meanwhile went home with two Grammis awards: pop of the year and lyrics of the year for her latest album 'Blue Lips (Lady Wood Phase II)'.

DJs Axwell / Ingrosso won electro/dance music of the year for 'More Than You Know/I Love You' and legendary Swedish punk rocker Thåström's 'Centralmassivet' was named rock of the year.

There was also a blast from the past with Europe (mostly known to an international audience for 1980s mega hit 'The Final Countdown') claiming the award for hard rock/metal of the year.

Read about all the Grammis winners here and listen to some of them below:

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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