Tomorrow Anton Ewald releases a brand new single, ‘Close Up’. This morning the song got its premiere over on Swedish radio station Rix FM, and today Anton gives Scandipop readers a preview of the track ahead of its release.
It might only have been mere months since the release of his debut EP ‘A’, but boy has this chap managed to mature musically in the time since then. And we don’t just mean the song itself, which we’ll get to in a minute. His vocal has almost completely changed – or perhaps he’s just learned how to use it to its full effect. When we first listened to ‘Close Up’, we thought it didn’t even sound like him. But it is him of course. Just improved. No disrespect to how he sounded before, but we think he’s definitely developed it to perfection. And it’s most probably this style of music which has brought it out in him – it showcases just what he can do with his vocal. And he can do a lot. More than what he let us hear when we all first heard him sing on stage in February this year.
The song itself is a banging 90s r&b number. It’s not Scandipop. Instead, it’s for all intents and purposes a song that could have been lifted from an American r&b artist’s album in the mid to late 90s – and given a glitzy three million dollar video. One of those. He’s (Anton has a writing credit on the song) managed to pay homage to that era just right. A falsetto post-chorus and a sexy middle eight are the song’s bonus features. A slick, well produced number that raises Anton up a few places in the pop ranks. We love our pop here at Scandipop (obviously), but we also love it when popstars go the other way, so long as they get it right. And he’s gotten it right. Other pop artists in Sweden wait until their third album until they develop a sound that’s this mature – Anton’s yet to release his first.
We love it – best thing he’s put out so far!
A preview;
[audio:https://www.scandipop.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Close-Up-preview.mp3|titles=Close Up preview]‘Close Up’ comes out tomorrow. It was written by Anton Ewald himself, along with Dhani Lennevald, Sebastian Lundberg, and Jeff Roman.