Wednesday, February 09, 2011

I live my life the way I planned

Ahh, Twitter--destroyer of free time, and yet, what would we do without you?

Not A Sinner Nor A Saint by poppostergirl

Today's interesting Twitter moment came from Sarah Dawn Finer, who mentioned that her original 2002 demo of "Not A Sinner Nor A Saint" would appear on the (amazing) upcoming Melodifestival boxset documenting the past ten year's of the contest.

Sarah's comment left me hitting my head against the wall--how had I not realized that was her singing on this demo for all these years? Obviously Alcazar's version is definitive and the way to be introduced to the song--it's a Melodifestival classic in their disco interpretation--but it's always nice to get these "peaking behind the music industry door" moments.

For anyone who hasn't heard it, here's Alcazar performing the song in Melodifestivalen 2003. It's the first version of "Not A Sinner Nor A Saint" anyone not in the music industry heard and the change from the original demo is stunning...and for the better, much as I love Sarah (though that has much to do with the arrangement and production).



I'm excited to hear what other demos will appear in the boxset. Dare to dream of the 99% impossibility of Måns's version of "Hero" showing up...

10 comments:

Aaron said...

YAY!!!!!!!!! You're back!!! How have you been?

Firstly, By Hero you mean the Charlotte Perrelli masterpiece right? - I MUST HEAR THIS DEMO!!!!!!

And do you have any more info (Date/Tracklist?) about the box-set

Damian said...

Sarah would be the last artist I expected to sing Nas Nas. I have really high hopes for this rarities CD, gonna hunt it this March in Stockholm.
Hero with Måns would be incredible to get though due to his live performance Charlotte's one sound stronger. Oh and I hope Linda Pritchard's Hollow would be there, such a stunning song in her performance.

Poster Girl said...

Aaron, thank you! Once again, I don't deserve it what with being such an on again-off again tease, but it's appreciated. Yup, that "Hero"--though I'm not technically sure if his recording of it exists, Måns was thinking about using it at one point. The box set comes out March 4 and, though I haven't seen the tracklist yet, it definitely sounds intriguing. It has all of the song's from this year as well, 100 songs from the past ten years, and a CD with demos, versions in other languages, etc (the official description mentions Sonja Aldén's "Invincible," which we've heard before, Sarah's "Not A Sinner," and Sonja's dance version of "Night of Passion"). It also comes with a book by Christer Björkman, the man responsible for revitalizing Melodifestivalen. I'm very excited to find out more--I'm sure Damian will publish details when they are available. Here is one place to order it, but any Swedish store you prefer will probably also stock it.

I expect you're right about Charlotte's version ultimately being better, but it's just such a fascinating "could have been" scenario that I would love to hear it. Instead I imagine we're getting more "demos by not too well known demo singers/singers before they were famous," which is interesting, too--just probably not quite as exciting. I'd love to get the full version of Linda's "Hollow," so that would definitely be something to look forward to!

Aaron said...

OMG! - *sees link* *dies*

THAT'S AWESOME! :)

bobby said...

Welcome back!

Shirley Clamp does a lot of the demo work too ;-) As does Sanne (of Play/Ghost vs Sanne).

As for NAS NAS....i still cant get over how its an awful and shameful rip off of Monica Naranjo's anthemic http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QsOxFckNyM

And the writers cant really argue the song was out of their hears and the comparison was pure incidental. The song was pretty big in SonyMusic and Monica recorded english versions that had pretty strong European airplay.

(As you can tell, i am pretty much a massive Monica fan....my mouth dropped when i heard NAS NAS...i'm still attending therapy over it).

Poster Girl said...

Ha ha, isn't it? I've been so good about saving money recently and Melodifestivalen is going to completely ruin that track record ;)

Bobby, there are similarities there, aren't there? More from the production on Alcazar's version than Sarah's demo. I had no idea Sanne was a frequent demo singer! I'd love to hear some of the things she's done.

bobby(Dstp) said...

Yes, similarities. You could win a legal case of plagiarism. The Sarah demo sounds a lot like Strong Enough by Cher. So though NAS NAS is a brilliant pop song, its totally unoriginal.

Yeah, Sanne (and Shirley) do a lot of the demo work. I wish I had Sanne's demos. Linda Sundblad does a lot of demo work too.

PeterDeluxe said...

How did u find that song of Not A Sinner, Nor A Saint ??

Poster Girl said...

Hi, Peter,

It happened a few years ago, so let me see if I can recall this correctly...the Warner/Chappell site used to have a section on its songwriters (well, it still does, but it's been redesigned). On each writer's page, there were several songs by him/her. One of "Not A Sinner"'s songwriters--I'm going to guess it was Tommy Lydell because I seem to remember it being a man and I don't think it was Bobby Ljunggren--had that version of the song posted. I never realized until Sarah's tweet, though, that it was her singing.

Ah, I just found the post where I first mentioned it--it's here.

اجاق گاز آلتون said...

Alton stove quality assurance and 2 year warranty for Alton products. Buy Alton stove in luxury store
تضمین کیفیت اجاق گاز آلتون و ضمانت 2 ساله محصولات آلتون.خرید اجاق گاز آلتون در فروشگاه لوکس

اجاق گاز آلتون

فروشگاه لوکس