Monday, March 09, 2009

The right way straight to my heart

There aren't many artists more generous with their material than Magnus Carlsson. While, say, Frankmusik's generosity tends to take the form of constantly sharing new songs he's created, Magnus shares older demos of often unreleased songs, but I'm just as eager to hear those, even if they lack the production touches we would have heard if they'd been worked up for a proper release.

The most recent selection of songs Magnus shared on his official site are from his work with the Da Buzz team. Apparently, after participating in Melodifestivalen in 2006, Magnus felt an urge to begin working on English language material and, being a fan of Da Buzz's work, he recorded some demos with the group (well, with the two men in the group) in the summer and fall of 2006. Only one of the songs made it onto the main edition of the album in the end, but the song that made the cut was one of my absolute favorites, though I didn't realize it was by Da Buzz until now: "Don't You Worry," the song I've always imagined in my alternative handling of Live Forever - The Album to have been the late fall/early winter 2006 single (with "Crazy Summer Nights" as the summer 2006 single instead of "Waves Of Love"). It's an incredibly sweet but poppy song which I strongly recommend you seek out the album version of.

Anyway, Magnus recently uploaded to his official site the demos from his work with Da Buzz, though some of the songs--all the ones never previously released except for one, and that one's a ballad--are only long clips, not the full thing. If you bought the deluxe digital version of Live Forever - The Album, you already had the demos for "I Belong To You," "I Found Love" and "Don't You Worry," but the amazing transformation of the latter from its demo to final version hints at what a treat we might have been in for had these demos--which are already pretty good--ever been reworked for actual release. The previously unheard (as far as I'm aware) songs are "Can't Believe," "Even If I Want To," and "Rescue Me." I'd love to hear full versions of those last two if they exist, given how great their up-tempo pop sounds to my ears, but I'm mainly glad we got this little glimpse into Magnus's and Da Buzz's recording vaults.

6 comments:

Myfizzypop said...

i'm quite happy with this practice of uploading demo tracks to websites. Stock Aitken and Waterman are doing it on the PWE website too, and it's lovely to flick thru their vaults. Didn't realise Magnus was at it too - had a quick shufty and there is some good stuff there. Considering how immense and mega the Live Forever album was, i'm still disappointed in how it was handled. Really there could have been 5 very strong singles from that cd, but perhaps that's a topic for a post one day.

Alexander said...

Check your Inbox on Last.fm, girl!

The demos are pretty good, it's the sort of music Magnus should be doing... Pure pop!

D'luv said...

Are Da Buzz working strictly behind the scenes now? They had some jams back in the day, in the early '00s.

Poster Girl said...

Everyone should do it, Paul! There's probably nothing I'd love more than to get to spend time in a record company's vaults going through the demos.

Alexander, exactly--that's what I want from him and what I hope he does on his next album, whenever it might come out.

D'luv, no, they're still going (and still great)! Well, not exactly if we're speaking of just this moment, but they just released a greatest hits album early last year that had several new songs on it; they're on a temporary break right now with the members pursuing some different projects (rock group, solo career, etc.).

Anonymous said...

Even If I Want To was recorded by a singer called Elvira and was pretty popular. Video is even on Youtube, but sounds JUST like Da Buzz.

Poster Girl said...

Anonymous, that's the information Alex let me know through Last.fm, but thank you so much for letting me know--I always want to know about things like that, so please keep telling me if you recognize any cases of song recycling happening! You're right about it sounding just like Da Buzz--it's such an incredible resemblance that if you just played me the song without any other information, I'd think it was them.