I don't know if this is what it seems

Well, I never would have seen this coming...

The composers and song titles for the Norwegian national final, the Melodi Grand Prix, were announced today. All of the composers are Norwegian, and I have to admit I'm not all that up on my Norwegian songwriters, but a few names jumped out at me.

The one I'm kind of most surprised at? Fred Ball and Hannah Robinson have a song called "Baby, Don't Stop The Music." You might have heard of Fred Ball through his Pleasure project--the song "Out Of Love" got some blog buzz for a while. He's also worked with Bertine Zetlitz. Hannah Robinson has done stuff with Rachel Stevens ("Some Girls"!), Annie ("Chewing Gum"!), and Sophie Ellis-Bextor ("Me And My Imagination"!), among others; for the sake of my continued attempts to promote Lorie's new album 2Lor En Moi?, it's also worth mentioning that she (along with Richard X and a bunch of others) co-wrote the fantastic "Le Bonheur À Tout Prix !" (though interestingly, she and Richard X [as well as Thierry Sforza] are only credited as "auteur," not "compositeur"--that's Paul Harris and Ian Masterson--which is the opposite of what I would have expected; I kind of think that can't be right...I must be misunderstanding it or something). "Baby, Don't Stop The Music" will definitely be a song to look out for, even if you don't usually pay any attention to the whole Eurovision thing.

Other names I recognize? Anne Hvidsten has written a song ("A Little More") for the contest--she released a solo album some years ago and has written songs outside of that, too. The songs I know her from are pretty much ballads, but she has a great way with ballads.

Paul should be pleased to see that Christian Ingebrigtsen has co-written a song for the MGP; it's called "Eastern Wind" and was written with Eivind Rølles.

I've heard of Mira Craig, but never gone out of my way to listen to her. Anyway, she's got a song called "Hold On, Be Strong" in it; she's definitely got her own very...distinct style.

At least two guys from 70's/'80's-sounding rock band Wig Wam have songs in the competition; guitarist Trond Holter has a song in it called "Get Up" (he wrote last year's "Wannabe," performed by Crash) and singer Åge Sten Nilsen has a song called "Would You Spend The Night With Me."

Moving beyond songwriters, it looks like Lene Alexandra must really be in the MGP--really, "Sillycone Valley," which I remember reading about (can't remember whether it was rumor or confirmed at the time), can't be for anyone else. There's been some talk about who's performing what, but there's been no big announcement of all the performers as of yet.

Knowing she'd be better off way out of sight

Fact: I do not own a Bertine Zetlitz album. Not because I don't know of her or don't think I'd love her, though. Partly it's because of the whole "too many artists, too little time" thing, but I think "too little money" would be more accurate. Norwegian CDs always seem to be ridiculously expensive to import and if ever there was an artist for whom you should buy the actual physical CDs so to have the whole package--especially the artwork--I would bet it's Bertine. The Norwegian artist has released five studio albums so far, making beginning to catch up on what she's done a little intimidating...which means her upcoming "best of" album, due out December 3, is very welcome.

Ashamed--there's not much point in me writing too much about this, really, when it's been covered so eloquently and completely elsewhere, so I'll just say this: classy catchy electro-pop that takes Bertine's young daughter (born in January) as its starting point and goes on to create lyrics a lot darker than what you'd expect with a topic like that.

(Posted only for a short time since it's a new single.)

I'm not sure of anywhere where you can preorder Bertine Zetlitz's upcoming best of album, but I imagine Zailor will have it, though I've not used them since they stopped selling CDs and then started to again (all my Norwegian stores seem to disappear).

Next up: maybe an old-ish song from Sweden.

Trips to London and Paris

Random bits of music news or information:

I was thrilled to finally find out the date of release of Páll Óskar's new album; given how great I thought "International" (check this song out if you've missed it so far) and "Allt fyrir ástina" were, I've been eagerly anticipating the opportunity to hear more from this album, being billed as "his first dance album since 1999." Even better? The fact that it's being released November 7--that's practically here already! Even better than that? You can pre-listen to the whole album in good quality here. I can't wait--as soon as I get a chance, I'm definitely doing that (so far, I'd say it sounds more...restrained than the two lead singles, more dance-electronica as opposed to dance-pop).

Speaking of albums from Icelandic artists (and Páll Óskar, for that matter, who mentored them on X Factor), Hara's debut album was supposed to come out today, but I haven't seen it available yet. Still, for some reason, I'm interested to hear it--it could be really bad or it could be really good, or at least have some good songs on it. I think the first thing that intrigued me about them was the fact that they did "Wild Dances" for one of their X Factor performances--not that I think that's the best of Eurovision songs and not that the performance came off as I would've hoped (it sounds better in theory than I think it worked in reality), but can you imagine a world where someone in the UK or the US performed something like that--complete with wild dancing? Our singing shows would be a lot more entertaining.

The video for Swedish singer Måns Zelmerlöw's latest single, "Brother Oh Brother," is out. Watch it here, with thanks to Oswald's Popcorn for the heads-up. And then cue debate on his latest look.

As XO's Middle Eight and Tremble Clef both point out, Norwegian artist Bertine Zetlitz has a new electro-pop song up on her MySpace, "Ashamed," which will lead into her greatest hits.

Don't forget that Martin Stenmarck's new album, Det är det pojkar gör när kärleken dör (interesting title), comes out November 7. Ginza's got the tracklisting up:

1.) Rubb och stubb
2.) 100 år från nu (blundar)
3.) Det skall vara fest den dagen jag dör
4.) Liten man på jorden
5.) Psalm nr 2
6.) Det är det pojkar gör när kärleken dör
7.) Ful
8.) Som en sten
9.) Dagen D
10.) Den långa vägen hem (4 km-sången)
11.) 100 år från nu (blundar) (could be the remix of it?)

You can preorder a signed copy of it here.