Monday, April 05, 2010

Swedish charts update

When was the last time you looked at a singles chart and your favourite song was at no.1?



Welcome to this week's Swedish Radio Digilistan singles chart, where "Keep On Walking" by Salem Al Fakir remains at the top of the chart and is the top-selling single in Sweden for yet another week. And deservedly so: I'm not just saying it for obvious reasons, but the quality of this song is just breathtaking - the musical arrangement is completely magical.

As you would expect at this time of year, Melodifestivalen songs are dominating the chart although it's maybe not the usual landslide, with Pauline, Alcazar, Pain of Salvation, Pernilla Wahlgren, Neo and Jessica Andersson taking up position in the lower reaches of the chart rather than dominating the top 20.

There are obviously a lot of people needing a cure for insomnia, which can only account for MF winner "This Is My Life" by Anna Bergendahl being at no.2 with the growing possibility that she will top the chart next week. And before you ask, I'm not going down the sour-grapes road any more, I'm just judging songs on their own merit rather than in the context of a song competition - I'm well over that one now.

Eric Saade's "Manboy" is at no.3. I knew this would do very well after the contest and it has become a huge radio hit too. It will be interesting to see how his career develops from here - of course there is always lots of room in the Swedish pop market for yet another male solo singer.

If only the same could be said for the British pop scene at the moment - the 'next big thing'-obsessed media is only fixated on female singers, and the only male artists getting attention are those in the urban/'grime' genre - the domination of that style of music in the British charts is becoming completely intolerable in my view! I know this has nothing to do with the Swedish charts but I thought it was worthy of a rant anyway !!

Another one which has done very well is Timoteij's "Kom" - no. 4 this week and I'm not surprised, it's just soooo catchy.



The other major radio hits to come out of MF - Ola's "Unstoppable" and Darin's "You're Out Of My Life" are still holding on to their places in the top 10.


European crossover dance hit of the moment "Stereo Love" by Edward Maya & Vika Jigulina is also doing very well in the Swedish top 10. It's got a very distinctive hookline, but (of course) it will be ignored in the UK, that's pretty obvious. Would like to be wrong though!


Very nice to see that Sweden has boarded the Adam Lambert bandwagon - "Whataya Want From Me" is getting lots of airplay and is one of the highest climbers this week, sitting at no. 14 and is surely set to climb higher.

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