Lopez Blogs

Swedish stage has got new great duo and what makes it greater is that it consists of two loveliest artists - Jonathan Fagerlund and Sandra Dahlberg. Both are quite familiar for Swedish-pop lovers.
In a short Sandra Dahlberg originally started career on talent-show Fame Factory, performed twice on Melodifestivalen ("Här stannar jag kvar", "Jag tar det jag vill ha"), lived long time together and gave a birth to son Vilmer with another Fame Factory-Melodifestivalen artist Jimmy Jansson and though year before she's made comeback with the single "Ta på mig", it wasn't quite successfull and the single wasn't even released being very worthy though. Ah, I forgot to say that Sandra is the girl with amazing sense of humour and if you know Swedish, reading her blog can be very pleasant thing for you.
Jonathan Fagerlund is young artist who already managed to release 2 albums and to participate once in Melodifestivalen with the song "Welcome To My Life". Very positive and nice person as well.
Being good friends Sandra and Jonathan decided to create common project that Sandra initially announced quite originally to Expressen as a new dance-project with a lot of violins and nyckelharpas, they have made one German label interested and they were going to promote Nord in Germany. Due to Sandra's description they planned to perform in images of ice-prince and ice-princess with a lot of elk shit around. Sometimes it's difficult to see border between Sandra's humour and real plans so we decided to wait for some real appearance of Nord and got it at Stockholm Pride.
Initially Sandra and Jonathan performed solo all of their Melodifestivalen entries and Jonathan's single "Ready 4 It" and after that right on the stage they transformed to super-heroes in tight bright-coloured suits and big screens have demonstrated funny legend about these fairytale pop-saviours. Unexpectedly for us it was the end of the show but as Jonathan promised on his blog it was just a beginning of their project and Nord's music is on the way. How amazing would it be to get this schlager-duo back on Melodifestivalen and I will be quite surprised if it's not a secret plan of Nord.

Isn't it fantastic when one amazing artist's becoming vocalist of another amazing project?
Jonna Sailon and All Ends have become well-known for a wide audience approximately at the same time (2007-2008). Actually Jonna appeared first time on tv-show Fame Factory with such future stars like Linda Bengtzing, Cam Tyler, Sandra Oxenryd and Alexander Schöld, few years after the show she's started working with Harry Sommerdahl (Rasmus, Robyn, Lambretta, Ace of Base) and released great pop-rock-single "Sacred" in Spring 2008 which entered Top-30 of Swedish chart and unfortunately there was no a lot of information about her since that.
Alternative rock-band All Ends was formed in 2003 but it also took some time before they've made a hit in Sweden. In 2007 they released EP "Wasting Life" and the album "All Ends" the same year, "Wasting Life" became a hit entering Top-10 of Swedish single-chart, album reached only #40 but turned to be a really worthy debut with powerful sound, great hit-melodies (Still Believe, Pretty Words, Walk Away) and solid vocal performance.
This year one of female vocalists Emma Gelotte has left band and Jonna Sailon was chosen as replacement for Emma, band has signed deal with label Nuclear Blast and plans to release new album "A Road to Depression" very soon.

I'd like to put your attention on one interesting show being popular in Sweden in 90s. Sure many of you know about Fame Factory (talent-show in the beginning of 00s) and artists which came from it (Linda Bengtzing, Sandra Oxenryd, Magnus Bäcklund, Mathias Holmgren...) but then many of these singers were already not newcomers for Swedish audience participating before in show "Sikta mot stjärnorna". The aim of participants was to imitate different big stars and the winner of every show qualified to the final. The winner of the final was sent to European final. In this amazing show you could see Sandra Oxenryd as Carola, Magnus Bäcklund as Tom Jones, Mathias Holmgren as Nick Kamen, Cecilia Vennersten as Mariah Carey, Caroline Wennergren as Ella Fitzgerald and you can also watch yourself performances of Linda Bengtzing doing Lene from Aqua, Shirley Clamp doing Maria McKee, Bosson as Michael Jackson and Date as Take That.

On his long road of music career Anders managed to change names not once, it all started from Anders J. who released back in 2001 few really nice singles like "Oslagbar" sounding like high-level international pop of that time.
In 2003 Anders have transformed into Anders Johansson and took participation in legendary "Fame Factory" that gave Swedish music not less stars than Idol gives recent years. It really pushed up his career and gave him his #1 single "Without You" and successful debut album "If It's All I Ever Do", he released some other Top-10 hits ("When I become me", "If It's All I Ever Do") and second album "When I Become Me" that reached #13, common style of Anders' music was already built then - fresh, uplifting, energetic pop with guitars, Swedish feeling and smell of the best Backstreet Boys' and Westlife works (by the way he was actually singing backing vocals on Westlife's album "Face to Face").
Third Anders' album "Anders Johansson" was released in 2006 but turned into absolute flop on #54 of albums' chart. Later in 2007 Anders has released Heart's cover "Alone" on his own label and again it reached only #42. But next try with single "Ready To Fly" was more successful and the song got to the radio. Soon after Anders decides to change his name to Anders Fernette and career goes up again with Eric Carmen's cover "Hungry Eyes" becoming #5 hit in Sweden and next single "Tell Me Why (So Incredible)" at #16. Time has come for a new single "Lola", it sounds quite different from previous Anders' stuff and goes RedOne direction and soon we'll receive video for this single. You can listen to the stream from Anders' official site below: