» Something for the autumn

Anna Ternheim – Girl Laying Down
My best friend’s favourite artist is Anna Ternheim, a Swedish singer/songwriter who is about to release her second album this month. Her first one wasn’t really my cup of tea, but she caught my attention when she did a cover of a song from one of my favourite albums of all time (Broder Daniel’s “Cruel Town”) called ‘Shoreline’, last year. It was a big hit here in Sweden, going top five, and was also featured on Enthusiastic But Mediocre’s singles of 2005 top 100 list last year, so that should be proof enough it’s a really, really good song. But! ‘Girl Laying Down’, which is her new single, beats that song by miles. It’s euphorically good. Amazing lyrics, and a killer melody, completed with an amazing production with beautiful piano-verses, Bertine Zetlitz-ish sounds between the verses, and a very powerful chorus with violins and other amazing instruments. It’s better than ‘Will My Arms Be Strong Enough’ and ‘Not Ready To Make Nice’ and all other great 'slow numbers' which have been released this year. I mean it. It should be number one forever and ever.

Here is the beautiful promo video.



Frida Hyvönen – You Never Got Me Right
Don’t think I’ve gone all ‘singer/songwriter’, but there are some quite interesting things coming out of that genre in Sweden at the moment. I first mentioned Frida this winter, when I posted the really rather good song ‘The Modern’, which I’m sure you remember had brilliant lyrics about a male pregnancy. This is the last(?) single release from her album, and it’s nearly as good as ‘The Modern’. It seems like there’s something hypnotic about Frida’s music. It’s not the kind of music I listen to, yet I can’t stop listening to it. So seductive. So addictive. So beautiful. So interesting. And it still amazes me how Frida only uses a piano and still manages to sound innovative.

Other good singer/songwriter music from Sweden at the moment: The new albums by Lisa Miskovsky and Katie Goes To Tokyo. I might do something on them in the near future. And Hello Saferide's & Firefox AK's amazing duet "Long Lost Penpal", which you can download here.

posted by Chrille @ 9/29/2006