Everything is going smooth tonight

Just kind of a hodge-podge of things today!

Oh no...I should have known writing about Bea Bronchal was a mistake--despite all my best efforts to wash them out with other music, I've had her songs running through my head literally ALL DAY. With that in mind, here's yet another of her amazing pop stompers; this one's called "Lo Prefiero" and was originally by Rebeca, who was in the running to represent Spain at Eurovision 2006 with it (Rebeca also had another song, "Que no daría yo," in the running), but from what I've heard, I prefer Bea's version. Is it going to scare all of you away when I say that it's got touches of reggaeton and pop-rock in it? It shouldn't--I know I'm overusing this phrase when writing about Bea, but it's a total pop stomper that, with its rapidfire vocals and "hey hey" chants, will be running through your head the rest of the day; there's no resisting that chorus. It's a song that makes me want to learn how to street dance.



Anyway, here's the Lithuanian song I've been meaning to post about the past few days. I really was going to post the song itself, but all I've found is a low quality mp3 that, to be honest, someone else frustrated with not being able to find the song probably just ripped from a video somewhere. Still, consider it the "featured song" of the day.



The singer's name is Mantas, and the song is "Lovefool Tonight," a fairly recent (past two months or so) single. It's got a little bit of a disco beat running through it, but it's kind of Robbie Williams-esque in a way (maybe not a million miles away from his version of "Lovelight"?). Despite one giant lyrical misstep, the song's really lodged itself in my head; it's not the sort of thing I expect to take the Internet by storm, and in fact I'll be more than glad to see it not really talked about elsewhere--I don't expect it would meet a very friendly reception--but I'm very glad it exists for my own sake. Could a Lithuanian music store open up somewhere on the Internet, please?

How on Earth did I miss this news earlier?

(Well, OK, I know how, but still!)

Apparently (according to an article in Aftonbladet from March 14) Fredrik Kempe and Anna Sahlene have formed a duo called Pomp, already have a record contract with Universal, are already working in the studio, have their eyes set on Melodifestivalen 2009, and have asked Jessica Andersson to join them and make the duo a trio. Fredrik, in a blog post, kind of hedged back a way from that a little bit, saying that they're just kind of testing and nothing is certain. Elsewhere, he says the music is "dansmusik med schlagertouch" ("dance music with a schlager touch").

Now, my natural preference would be for both or all three (if Jessica ended up saying yes) of those artists to have solo careers (I love all three of them as solo artists), but if we can't have that--and let's face it, we haven't had that for quite some time and there's not really any indication that's an option on the table; Fredrik's just been doing songwriting, Anna released her version of "Brief & Beautiful" in Estonia but that's all we've heard from her in terms of a commercial/pop career (though ESCToday did say an album would be out this year), and Jessica's doing musicals and released a track with Nordman--if it's a case of this or nothing, then I will definitely take this.

Next up: a Dutch dance-pop group, I think.