Video Killed The Radio Star

At the risk of turning into a Melodifestivalen fan site (but would that be such a bad thing?), here is my favourite performance from last Saturday's show. You may recognise Magnus as one of the boys from fabulous Swedish pop group Alcazar - this is actually Magnus' 4th or 5th (I can't remember which) attempt at Eurovision success. Will this at last be Magnus' year? He's doing well so far, with a pretty good song and a dance routine channelling Rachel Stevens.

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To see the video scroll down past "Se allt från galan" to "Bodies Without Organs uppträder". This is a performance from a recent awards show in Sweden where BWO won Best Swedish Group, a fantastic achievement for a band whose first single, Living In A Fantasy, was hardly noticed by the Swedish public and their 2005 Melodifestivalen entry Gone failed to even get through the first round. However, their fortunes have been improving constantly since then, and this year - this week in fact - they return to Melodifestivalen for a second try with their brand new single (also the first release from their hotly anticipated 2nd album), Temple Of Love. I am more excited than words can say! I hope that any Swedes reading this will be kind enough to vote for BWO this weekend, and I in turn will be voting A LOT if they do become the Swedish Eurovision entry. Most of all I cannot wait to hear their new song, as I've not disliked a single thing they've done so far and I highly doubt I'm about to start now!

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The semi-finals of Melodifestivalen, the Swedish Eurovision selections, have begun and the first week welcomed back the singer of one of last year's best entries, Linda Bengtzing. She sings in Swedish but manages to make this not matter in the slightest. As this video shows, she has really grown in professionalism since last year, she looks fab and as she, along with Andrea Johnson (yes, the guy who had a hit with Glorious in 2000), is through to the finals, she has a good chance of doing very well out of this and perhaps even becoming the Swedish Eurovision entry for 2006. However, Bodies Without Organs are also entering so I sadly have to say I hope she doesn't.

I posted a new song by Amiel (vs A Tribe Called Quest no less!) on Into The Groove recently, but I still think this, her first solo single, is her best work. If you know the song, you will notice that the version used in the video is the one with slightly less lady-like language.

Scooch were a band launched in the hope of finding the next Steps, but they never quite managed it and this was their only really good song. They had one top 5 hit, More Than I Needed To Know, which was alright, but this one only got to no.15 which was a travesty. Although that is still higher than Annie has ever got with her UK single releases, so I suppose it was a triumph of sorts. They released an album, cleverly entitled Four Sure, because there was four of them and it had this song on it. You can get it quite cheap on Amazon Used & New. Amazingly, their web site still works, despite not having been updated since the year 2000.

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Sebastian was the runner-up in the 2005 series of Idol in Sweden (won by Agnes Carlsson - who also shares her surname with Robyn and Magnus from Alcazar, suggesting it is the Swedish equivalent of Smith) and he seems to be a very good singer. The only problem is, his debut single sounds like a cross between Daniel Powter and Ronan Keating, which really does not bode well for his future releases. Considering the runner-up in 2004 was Darin, this is quite a disappointment!

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The Danes have been getting a bit of a bad press lately, so here to win back any lost Dane-lovers is Natasha Thomas, one of their surprisingly few (considering they are so close to Sweden, although they are also near Belgium) good pop acts. This song was released in 2003, when Natasha was only 16, and was a big hit in Germany where I went on holiday that summer. I loved Why becase it sounds a bit like Ace of Base, so I wasn't surprised to learn that she had worked with some of the same producers as them. You may recognise Natasha as the girl from the Lacoste adverts, and soon you should see her on the music channels if you have them because her new single (the first to get a UK release) has just been added to a few of them. The new song is called Skin Deep and is a cover of a brilliant flop pop single from a few years ago, originally sung by a rather mysterious female singer called Anniq who was never heard of again. Natasha plans to release her album in the UK this month, but I don't think I'll be buying it since I've heard she has taken a cheap r'n'b direction! However, it does include songs called State of Mind and Curious so I'll be interested to find out if either or both of these are the Holly Valance tracks of the same names.