Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Allting har sin tid

I know blogs about the process of blogging have to be one of the less exciting things I could possibly write about, but here comes another one: I had real trouble deciding which new Shirley Clamp song to post. We've heard the studio version of Sonja Aldén's "Miracle," the English version of "Att älska dig," already as well as Shirley's live performance of the song, so I set aside "Miracle" first.

Choosing between "My Love Light," the English version of "Min kärlek," and "Det finns inga givna svar," the only completely new track on Shirley's new greatest hits album, was the real dilemma. We'd already heard Shirley sing a bit of "My Love Light" live and without musical backing, but we've been waiting years to hear an English version of this song. Sure, the Swedish lyrics of "Min kärlek" are so unbeatable than an English version probably can't beat the original, but has that made us any less interested in hearing an English version of this fantastic song, even if only as a curiosity? "Det finns inga givna svar," on the other hand, has to be the first original uptempo schlager song Shirley's given us in years. Then again, as a song, I don't really know that it can be better than "Min kärlek." Still, even if it won't be challenging my personal Shirley holy trinity of "Min kärlek," "Lever mina drömmar," and "Do They Know It's Christmas," I've been waiting for Shirley to return to this sound and "Det finns inga givna svar" is absolutely a good song--the fact that it's got a dance beat full of hits, sparkles, and swooshes underneath it, breathy "ah-ha" backing vocals, and is catchy enough to get stuck in your head after one listen means it clearly wants to endear itself to schlager fans, and that's always a good thing in my book.

My indecisiveness's result? I'm posting both songs, but only for a short time. Grab "My Love Light" here and "Det finns inga givna svar" here. "Min kärlek" is a modern classic, a schlager song with a surprising musical darkness to it that grows and grows on you until it's buried itself under your skin, so if you haven't heard it before, I strongly recommend checking it out in its original version.

Remember, though, that you can buy För den som älskar - En samling, Shirley's new greatest hits album, here (physical), here (physical), and probably here (digital) within a day or two.

Speaking of buying music, in all my excitement over Måns Zelmerlöw posting songs to his MySpace a week ago, I totally forgot about the existence of track 11 of MZW. If you want to own "Whole New World" or just want to buy the album digitally, you can purchase Måns's new album track by track or as a whole album (as mp3s) here. I was able to buy from it today even though I'm based in the U.S., so you should be able to use that store no matter where you live. Måns also provided comments on each song and the proper list of songwriters on his official website. I'll be writing a bit about the album soon, and about the Melodifestival final (and Erik Hassle...and Lily Allen...).

Next up: maybe more Swedish music with a dance beat.

4 comments:

Bas said...

Thanks for the songs Poster Girl! I really like the English version :o Wasn't expecting so much of it, but its quite good :) Hopefully it won't take long before I get the album in my hands. Shouldn't be long anymore...

Damian said...

Hej, dear PG! Week ago I came back from Stockholm, to say that it was amazing is to say nothing, I think you guess :) I never imagined that there's so much of activity, signings and meetings with artists this week so I was totally happy to meet Nina, H.E.A.T., EMD, Malena, Lily & Susie and Anna & Maria, to see Velvet's performance and to get signings of some other artists those were gotten by my friends for me from Mons, Agnes, Emilia, Sofia and Star Pilots. Probably 24-years-old guy is to big for all this fans' histeries but it blows away so much and it's so pleasant to see these artists alive and to say some warm words to them. Well, of course I've came back with HUGE pack of singles, albums and DVDs and there's some information that I'd like to share with you, hope you're interested and hope you didn't write it already and I didn't miss it on your blog.

I don't remember if you wrote about Brolle's promo-single "Fashion", actually I'm not fan of Brolle but I found his single and decided that promising something different from his music it can be interesting so I decided to own it and was very surprised that it's by Jonas Von Der Burg production. It's not the best VDB song, it lacks melody but it has nice qualitative arrangement and as I'm fan of VDB I'm pretty happy to have this single in my collection. Here it is: http://www.mediafire.com/?0mm3yjmnzud

I'm quite disappointed that I didn't buy some of Malena's albums on her signings because it's quite hard to get some in Internet. I just never knew she could really win, if I'd knew I would buy. But listening to karaoke-version from her single I've realized that back-vocals belong to Anorah, so seems like Anorah and Fredrik are very big friends :) Unfortunately Anorah didn't answer again on my question on her Myspace blog so I don't know if we can see her in Moscow but I hope she'll finally be able to go to ESC as back-singer. Here's that karaoke-version: http://www.mediafire.com/?evidigg2muz
By the way I was surprised it wasn't produced by Bassflow. But thanx to you I've found out that best Mons' new song "Forever" was produced by Bassflow, Peter is fantastic producer as always :)

Looks like neither Elofsson, nor Carlsson or Zitron were authors of Saturday Night, I've bought Erik's single and it's written by Lasse Andersson/Pontus Assarsson, and production is by Peter Kvint - as you see all the names are related to MF so now no doubts this song was very close to be performed by EMD. Here is this song by Erik - http://www.mediafire.com/?tnnnlmnmmjj

Don't forget to check produced by RedOne Pixie - "I Wish I Was There".

And finally thanx a lot for Shirley's songs, "Det finns inga givna svar" isn't her greatest hit but it's very good song however!

Poster Girl said...

Bas, it works better than I expected it to! I do think "Miracle" matches its English lyrics better, but I've always preferred "Min kärlek" as a song to "Att älska dig."

Damian, it's great to hear from you! Thanks for all the songs. I am very envious of you getting to go to Stockholm, but very happy for you as well :) I could listen people to talk about what they did and who they met there for days.

I had no idea Brolle's version of "Fashion" was produced by VDB! Interesting. I'd only heard a clip of it before this. I wonder if it was a tie-in with some sort of campaign? It's such a departure from his usual style to be doing electro David Bowie songs. Like you, though, if it's got VDB's work, I want to own it. All those rumors about "Saturday Night"'s writers ended up being really off! I too was pleased (but not surprised ;) After all, I love it!) when I saw that Peter had done "Forever." Oh, I hope Anorah gets to go!

Damian said...

Yeah, Brolle's "Fasion" was promo-song for MQ, so you're right about it :)