Thursday, April 26, 2007

And it wipes away the one I've been

Swedish (born in Uruguay to Uruguayan parents, though) singer Andrés Esteche, a Fame Factory graduate, may be best known for his two Melodifestivalen entries (and maybe the song "Bad Temptation"...he apparently also had another single in 2006, "Ängel," which was in Swedish and peaked at #7). By far the better of the two was "Just Like A Boomerang," but it took fifth in its semifinal in 2003 and therefore failed to make it to the final. One year later, the not-as-good "Olé Olé" would take him to the finals and ninth place (incidentally, I like his version of "Tango Tango" more than Petra Nielsen's, which took fourth). Pandora was in newspapers just recently for her accusations of plagiarism directed at Scooch's "Flying The Flag," but let's try to forget that, as she's made some great pop--especially of the dance-pop sort--over the years. The following song finds them teaming up for something not quite from either of their respective genres, or at least the genres they're associated with.

Summer Rain--this track is the exact opposite of what I would expect a collaboration between these two artists to be like--I know Pandora from her dance tracks and Andrés from his upbeat Latin-influenced (just in case titles like "Olé Olé" hadn't given that away) entries. "Summer Rain" though, is a smooth, relatively simple mid-tempo, maybe down-tempo song; if I had to sum it up in one word, it would definitely be "chilled." Perfectly so. Even without the title, it's definitely a spring or summer song, too, although you could probably use some Hilary Duff "Come Clean"-esque imagery, where it's not winter but sort of feels like it, or maybe feels like winter is melting away, if you wanted to.

I don't actually know anywhere that is selling Andrés Esteche's debut album, Just Like A Boomerang, which has "Summer Rain," but I do know you can get it on the compilation album Fame Factory Summertour 2003, which you can buy here (physical).

Next up: Swedish singer Sonja Alden's album came out this week, so probably something from that--that was almost today's post, but I didn't want to rush writing about it. As of now, though, I wouldn't say everyone should run out and buy the whole thing.

4 comments:

Kevin said...

PG, not sure if you fancy Andrés, but he actually has a profile in Qruiser! And you can talk to him! Qruiser is some sort of a gay personals site, owned by QX, the gay rag in Sweden... the very same one that crowned Måns the Sexiest Male In Sweden.

I think his album is out of print by now. I've just checked most of the Swedish online retailers, and none of them have it... with the exception of Ginza, the only e-tailer to have it. It's being sold for only 49kr! Albums usually retail for 149kr.

Click here to buy it.

Poster Girl said...

Fancying him wouldn't do me any good, right? And, shockingly, I do not fancy all the guys I write about ;) That's really neat, though! And that's an incredible deal! But for some reason, I didn't think Ginza shipped to the US--does it? If it does, I really can't pass that up.

Kevin said...

Oops! Sorry, you're right, Ginza does not ship outside of Sweden. I did find a copy on eBay though, with a "Buy Now!" option.

Click here for the eBay link.

Poster Girl said...

How do you find these things on eBay? When I look, nothing comes up...ooh, you have to check the "Worldwide" option, don't you? I wonder how much I've been missing out on by not doing that.