It’s a new year, don’cha know, and NOTHING BUT HOPE AND PASSION‘s Amazing Sweden column is celebrating by changing… absolutely nothing. It’s the same deal as ever, we in collaboration with Nordic By Nature and STIM, bring you three of the best songs from Sweden and you go listen to them and enjoy them. Why change? (also change is y’know, difficult and requires work and stuff, so this really works out best for everyone). This month’s helpings are below.
The masked trio behind TEDDYBEARS have some serious pop prestige, having collaborated on songwriting with likes of CHARLI XCX, SIA and MAX MARTIN, but their approach to the genre in their own music takes a more insurrectionist approach. Their new single Best You Ever Had, a collab with US rapper GORILLA ZOE, sounds irresistibly catchy, but also comes fully-loaded with enough lunatic energy to give it a feeling of danger that most pop songs don’t get anywhere close to. It’ll keep you dancing while simultaneously shaking your skull to pieces.
REIN is Stockholm-based musician Joanna Reinikainen, and her music is far removed from the graceful, gentle electro-pop that sits easily on blogs and party playlists. Instead, the songs on her recent self-titled EP are harsh, intense and powerful blasts of electronic dance music. Concrete Jungle is an absolute monster of a track, a tumble of steroid-infused muscle synths and Reinikainen’s ‘bring it on, world’ attitude. It’s a supremely self-confident and essential slice of thumping electronica.
Love Me Like I’m Not Made Of Stone was the opening shot of one of the most misery-soaked albums in recent history, LYKKE LI‘s I Never Learn. ERIKA SOLDH and LOKATT‘s electronic re-imagining, part of a compilation album for Stockholm label Ikaros Records, manages to rework the nature of that misery. Its peppier synthwork gives the track a sense of wistful regret, rather than the full blown immersion in tragedy of the original. It’s always a risk taking on something as distinctive as a LYKKE LI song, but they handle it perfectly, making the track their own while avoiding shredding what made the original special.
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