Hold on just for a while

A few notes on artist and songwriter-related subjects:

Martin Stenmarck's upcoming album, I Septemberland, features five songs from the team at Swedish music publishing and production company TEN (A*Teens, Amy Diamond, Erik Hassle). In this case, though, the songs don't seem to be by the Tysper/Grizzly/Mack team (who in addition to the aforementioned successes have also been the creators of Industry's "My Baby's Waiting" and VV Brown's "Shark In The Water") but rather by Elof Loelv and Kim Wennerström, who also worked with Erik Hassle and produced Malena Ernman's "La Voix." Kim is also a member of the band DYNO and Elof has worked with them (if you're not already a fan, now's the time to fall in love with them; they're overdue a post here, but in the meantime, check out coverage on #1 Hits From Another Planet and Don't Stop The Pop), who are now under TEN's wings. Anyway, I wouldn't expect a change in Martin's style, but hopefully this is a good sign in terms of quality meeting accessibility. The song titles TEN is involved with are:

I Septemberland
Gråa Hjärtans Sång
Happy Ending
Jag Vill, Jag Vill, Jag Vill
J, Jeff och Jesus

Kris Allen apparently wrote some songs with Eg White (Will Young's "Leave Right Now," "Who Am I," "Let It Go," "I Won't Give Up," "Tell Me The Worst," James Morrison's "You Give Me Something," Adele) for his upcoming debut major label album. The tracklisting isn't finalized yet, so it's uncertain which if any will make the cut.

(Side note: the first tastes of Adam Lambert's new music is out, but it's a non-album power ballad, "Time For Miracles," for the 2012 soundtrack and is apparently not indicative of the sound of the album. Oh, and Dr. Luke recently mentioned he was adding retro synths to a song for Adam--I'm hoping he means Van Halen's "Jump"-style synths.)

Bosson released a greatest hits collection this past summer. Did anyone else not know that? A quick glance at the tracklisting doesn't show any new songs beyond a version of "One In A Million" featuring Elizma Theron. I hope he releases new material soon...and that it's more like his older songs, not like "Wake Up." He's friends with Twentyfive Productions (Lisette Vares, Danny's "I Need To Know") on MySpace, which could mean they just produced the new version of "One In A Million" or he's working on them with new stuff.

As Paul of Fizzy Pop and PopMuse have written, the video for Will Young's new single, "Hopes & Fears," is out. It's a great song, one of those gentle mid/up-tempo hybrids that just makes you feel better about the day.

Seven of the songs on Magnus Carlsson's upcoming album Pop Galaxy are by Pitchline (Velvet's "Take My Body Close" and "Come Into The Night" and a song with Elin Lanto that I still hope to hear some day--speaking of which, Scandipop has great Elin news about a new single and possible participation in a certain music festival).

Kleerup, Natasha Bedingfield, and newcomer Jonas Myrin (you might know him best as the male mannequin in Sophie Ellis-Bextor's "Get Over You" video) all worked on a song together--presumably for Natasha. It was such a surprising combination that I had to mention it.

James Morrison has a new single, "Get To You," coming out to promote the rerelease of his second album, Songs For You, Truths For Me. It's produced by Mark Taylor, the same man who produced "Broken Strings," his excellent duet with Nelly Furtado, as well as many, many other songs. It's not quite as great as that earlier single, but it's good.

Nanne's great recent single "Otacksamhet" was co-written and co-produced by '80s Swedish popstar Paul Rein. Given how much I ADORE the Epicentre-penned "Kom Hit," on which Nanne duets with Paul, I'm thinking they should collaborate more often.

I'm sure all the hardcore Agnes fans already knew this, but half of Agnes's demo version of "Say Love," the song which eventually ended up being released by Sandra, is streaming in the music section of the website of the song's cowriters, Epicentre's Anders Wikström and Fredrik Thomander.

Every second counts

Apparently, Kris Allen's debuting-on-Monday single is a cover of the Script's "We Cry" b-side, "Live Like We're Dying."



Further "apparently," it sounds something like this:



There's not much crazier than judging a song based on a twenty second clip, but a few preliminary thoughts come up.

On the one hand, sounding like the Script--well, sounding like the best half of the Script's musical output--is about as good a sound for Kris as I could have hoped for. On the other hand, I couldn't really recognize his voice for the whole first part of that clip, until he actually sang the "gotta live like we're dying" line--which probably concerns me more than the fact that his lead single is a cover (it's a great song, definitely better than the A-side it accompanied, not exactly widely heard given its B-side status, and suits Kris sound-wise perfectly; what we do hear of his voice here melds into the song perfectly). I think my (very premature) attitude for the moment is: idea of the cover is fine...hopefully it's just not lazily done. He's an American Idol winner, so really, the odds that it will be shouldn't be that great.

Anyway, potentially promising start for Kris--now hopefully he follows through and Adam Lambert and Allison Iraheta both deliver.

So leaving me behind was your first step

I LOVE the final single version of Frankmusik's "Confusion Girl." It's the perfect balance between Vince's quirkier side and the more mainstream intermediate version of the song we heard, with an end result of a fully charming pop song that's the best version of this track we've heard. The single is out July 12 in the UK.



On the Frankmusik front, a new song, "Dancing In The Dark," is streaming on his MySpace, along with previews of the remix version of Vince's album.

The lead single from Ola's new album is called "Sky's The Limit" and will be premiered via a performance on June 22 and released that same day, I think. It's written by KeiOne, Json, and Ola, which does make me a bit nervous--that could mean it's a step closer towards R&B, while I tend to prefer Ola as a vehicle for the pure pop songs of Tony Nilsson and Bassflow. Still, ideally it could mean Ola releasing something that stirs up more excitement about him (though in terms of chart success pop seems a surer bet than pop-&B in Sweden); plus, he's definitely spent time with Tony and Peter "Bassflow" Boström, so maybe we could get a great mix. I do love Adam Tensta's "80s Baby," KeiOne-produced hip-hop meets pop with just the right combination of hardness and breeziness; I'm just worried about how Ola's voice will match with this sort of music as well as quality overall.

Speaking of Peter Boström, he's just done a remix--or, as it's more accurately being called, a remake--of Mando Diao's "Gloria." I'm not going to put it up there with his best work on, say, Martin Stenmarck's singles, but listen to it 20 minutes into the 10-10:30 block here.

Since the sporadic nature of my recent posts meant I never did a fully rundown on the American Idol finale, I'd like to add that I am happy for Kris, not angry with the result (and hoping I'll end up wanting to buy his album--no one's going to agree with me and it's probably best for his commercial viability that he doesn't, but I'd love him to be singing songs like Ryan Cabrera's best work), but I stand by my earlier comment that I'm "hoping Adam ends up being the best popstar America has" (maybe you could qualify that with "male popstar," given the real lack of competition on that front--I'm not talking just about music, though obviously that's important, but all-out exciting popstarness--but even that caveat is probably unneccesary) "Kiss & Tell," which #1 Hits From Another Planet posted a few months ago, still gets frequent plays from me--I want Adam to make the glam rock which suits him so perfectly and which the U.S. could really use a dose of, but I also want him continuing down an electro-pop route like that of this old demo song, too.

With every step it's harder to believe

(Eurovision post coming soon!)

Thanks to Adam Lambert, Kris Allen, and Allison Iraheta, I've felt more invested in this season of American Idol than last year. Still, if you gave me a choice between the Cathy Dennis co-written winner's song, "No Boundaries," on sale on iTunes in its studio version by the two finalists on May 22 (and also co-written by Kara DioGuardi)...

...and Heidi Montag's "Blackout," also a Cathy Dennis co-write, available on iTunes as of today...



there's no contest as to which I'd rather listen to. I actually like last year's song, but Cathy and Kara, I know there were probably certain parameters you were given, but really?

Of course, if neither of those are to your liking, you could go with several songs from Glee, Fox's new comedy which debuted after Idol but won't continue until this fall. If you've ever wanted to hear glee club versions of Journey's "Don't Stop Believin'" (the female lead on this debuted the main female role in Spring Awakening)...



(that video will only play for Americans, I think, but you can hear parts of the song and see parts of the scene in the trailer; obviously, spoiler alert for anyone planning on watching the show)

...or Amy Winehouse's "Rehab" (sung in peppy upbeat style by the rivals earlier in the show)...



(ditto on only being accessible to Americans)

you're in luck.