Lopez Blogs

Did I tell you how much I love Stephen Simmonds? Ok, fine, it means we don't need to waste words this time and just to enjoy this very nice performance of Stephen at Nyhetsmorgon. That's what I call a real artist puting piece of his heart in every key.
Stephen performed 2 songs from his album "Anomie" released few months ago - "For Father" and "Adiyeah" with big band and new hairstyle.

Stephen Simmonds's album "Anomie" is out proving all our excitement we wrote about in previous review of the album so what we can now is just to enjoy this lovely soul-album and wait for new performances and singles from Stephen. Hopefully "Just Love" being one of best year's songs will get a proper commercial push in a close future but now you can check beautiful acoustic performances of album's first single "Adiyeah" and new song "Armageddon" in Efter Tio and XL-live shows.

it's around 2 weeks before new Stephen Simmonds' album "Anomie" will apear in stores (at November 10th) and we can already check snippets of all tracks here.
Due to samples all who was scared to completely lose old good soul-sound of Stephen should breathe out calmly as at least half of this 10-tracks album has a lot of parallels with previous Stephen's albums. I've already presented to you latest Stephen's singles "Adiyeah" and "Just Love" - amazing ballad-track that's going to be officially released very-very soon.
Talking about other songs - you can find pretty wide music-range of Stephen still keeping whole album on his stable orbit - so "Armageddon" and "Too Close" are breathing with familiar inspiring melody-structure of Mr. Simmonds' soul-stuff but in more contemporary wrap, also you can find funky "Falling Down" and raggae-pop "Never Learn", "Anomie" is more outgoing bridge between darker 90s pop-soul of the artist and fresh side presented with first single "Adiyeah", the album is finished with "Lisa" - epic track sounding like religious anthem, massive and spiritual.
Greatest find in tracklist is cover of Titiyo's "Longing for lullubies" that Stephen performed few years ago for P3 Guldgalan, falling in love with it I couldn't even dream to get it in studio-version, check it below and hope you'll enjoy it as much as I do!

One of the most inspring soul-artists and owner of amazing voice Stephen Simmonds has prepared new single "Just Love" and it sounds at least like the best single of month!!!
But firstly I'd like to present Stephen to those who don't know about him quite enough. Stephen Simmonds is international child, having Jamaican father and Swedish mother living with family in United States and Israel in childhood but finally staying in Sweden where he's got music education and was discovered in mid-90s. His debut album "Alone" turned to be a huge breakthrough in 1997 and debut single "Tears Never Dry" featuring Lisa Nilsson has become real classic of Swedish pop-music. Getting quite huge interest of labels around the world album was also released in Japan and in UK and US under new name "Spirit Tales". During next few years Stephen has released bunch of other singles ("All The People", "Alone", "Now's The Time", "Get Down") - very gentle and soulfull tracks which marked him as the singer with uniquely beautiful voice and excellent taste in music he was making. Another highlight of that Stephen's era was duo with Titiyo "Comin' Home" - one of the most beautiful song in discography of both, song without age. Later in 2002 when Stephen came back with new album "For Father" in 2002 they kept working together so you can here Titiyo's vocal contribution in this work. After release of Titiyo's huge hit "Longing For Lullabies" (in collaboration with Kleerup) Stephen has made brilliant cover for P3 Guld-2009 that I really recommend you. On "For Father" he was working as well with Dilba which he recorded single "For Father" with (along with other singles - "I Can't Do That" and "Let Me Touch").
Third album "This Must Be Ground" in 2004 marked Stephen's collaboration with other great vocalists like Sarah Dawn Finer and Anna Nordell and new singles "Where's My Love" and "Louder". In 2006 Stephen's song "So Good" qualified to Melodifestivalen but as he didn't want to sing the song himself it was rejected by SVT. This year Stephen has come back with brand new single "Adiyeah (Give People What They Want)" with new unexpected sound but still loads of artistic and vocal charm and after Summer of promotion and participance in Ladies Night show with Martin Stenmarck, Brolle and Andreas Johnson he's back with a new single "Just Love".
"Just Love" is written by Stephen and produced by huge international songwriter/producer Arnthor Birgisson who worked with many world names like Britney Spears, Leona Lewis, Westlife, Janet Jackson, etc. and also produced Darin's "You're Out Of My Life" and you can feel that hard beat in amazing combination with modern pop-sound, r'n'b vibes and completely ecstatic melody that screams to be new international breakthrough of Mr. Simmonds. Single is planned for release in the beginning of October along with new album "Anomie".

Autumn has just started and we've already got whole bunch of planned exciting album-releases, I should collect all of them in one post.
- Magnus Carlsson's new album "Pop Galaxy" will be released already on September 22th but before we'll get another single "The Best In Me".
- It's just few days till new Ola's album "Ola" (September 15th).
- Erik Hassle's EP with 4 new songs is planned for the end of September.
- Nanne Grönvall's album "En Rastlös Själ" is ready to hit shops on October 6th.
- After 6 years Stephen Simmonds releases new album "Anomie" in October.
- Jennie Berggren's album "My Story" release was moved to October 13th.
- A little bit earlier Ace Of Base will release album "The Golden Ratio" on September 24th with first single "All For You" planned to be released already today.
- Caroline af Ugglas after huge success of previous year is back with new album planned for September 22th publishing as well book "Hjälp, vem är jag?" (Help, who am I?)
- EMD's album "Rewind" release was firstly carried from August 25th to the end of October but now you can find its release in some shops marked with December 31th.
- Albums from Linda Pritchard, Titiyo, Tove Styrke, Lisa Miskovsky, Love Generation, second EP from Gravitonas and Christmas album from Måns Zelmerlöw are to be expected.
- Sanna Nielsen's just released her last single "Part Of Me" and ready for new release of Christmas album with Shirley Clamp and Sonja Aldén, this time due to title "Vår Jul" (translation of English title of previous album "Our Christmas" that obviously says tracklist won't be different in common) it's gonna be in Swedish.
- Amy Diamond after 5 studio-albums is ready for compilation "Greatest Hits" that will be out on November 3rd.
Not enough to be excited? It's alright, it's just the first days of Autumn ;)

New set of brilliant performances was shown this weekend on Sommarkrysset. Linda Pritchard performed her new single "Miracle" and it was in my opinion the greatest Sommarkrysset performance that I've seen since Lady Gaga appeared on the stage of Gröna Lund in 2008! E.M.D. has also presented their new single "Save Tonight" that was released a week ago. Another highlight of the show was Stephen Simmonds (very interesting artist that I feel like I need to tell you about later) with his latest single "Adiyeah" and Journey's "Don't Stop Believin'". We've got also some classics of 90s from Dr. Alban performing medley of his hits. And finally Lazee performed big hit of this spring "Calling Out" with Apollo Drive.

Few months ago fresh pop-project Lovestoned presented itself to a wide audience of Melodifestivalen with single "Thursdays" written by Thomas G:Son and Peter Boström. It wasn't their debut on a big stage though. Band (consisting of 2 former Idol contestants - Pär Stenhammar & Colombia-born Robert Kragh, Bulgarian girl living in Germany Elena Boyadjyeva and Swedish singer Emilie Fjällström) has started with their debut single "Rising Girl" in 2009 and tried to promote it in Germany (visiting Berlin this March I was very plesantly surprised finding this single in one of trade centers on a front shelf next to Agnes' "Release Me") preparing the ground for their debut album "Rising Love". Seems like Melodifestivalen and "Thursdays" (#21 of Swedish chart) didn't help them in Sweden a lot as album is currently totally ignored in charts and it's a real shame as this is very nice pop-work with a bunch of catchy tunes, summer vibes and loud names in album credits (Oscar Görres, Danny Saucedo, Remee, Thomas Troelsen, Niclas Kings, Stephen Simmonds, Daniel Lindström, Thomas G:son, Peter Boström), in common it rolls around band's Ace Of Base-raggae style that you could catch on their singles so those who like "Rising Girl" and "Thurdays" extremely need to get this album right now, it won't let you down. Now band releases second single in Germany and it's "I Know Nothing" (written by first Swedish Idol winner Daniel Lindström, popular singer Stephen Simmonds and Fredrik Larsson), hope it will help band to finally break through there along with German promo-tour and come back to Sweden for further hard-working on bringing up their career in home country.