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.