Over the course of the autumn so far, SVT has launched something of an unofficial rival show to TV4’s mega successful Så Mycket Bättre format. It’s called Alla Tiders Hits, and like Så Mycket Bättre it features established Swedish artists performing cover versions of popular Swedish hits. Only one apiece though, but as with Så Mycket Bättre the songs then get released onto iTunes. Unfortunately though, neither the show nor the songs have captured the imaginations of the Swedish public, Swedish radio OR the Swedish sales charts, anything like Så Mycket Bättre has. Nonetheless though, there’ve understandably been a few gems churned out amongst them, which we’ll be featuring on here in the coming weeks. It makes sense to start off with the best of the bunch – so here we’ve got Linda Sundblad and ‘S.O.S’.
It’s not so much a cover of the ABBA classic, as a cover of the Swedish language version that Agnetha Fältskog made a hit for herself in Sweden around the same time, while promoting her fifth solo album. Linda Sundblad’s version admirably manages to pay the utmost respect to the original – changing very little, but yet changing enough to give the song a fresh new vibe. They’ve (Linda and her producer Elias Kapari) somehow managed to completely modernise it, while at the same time using a retro style of production. It’s almost as though they’re showing off – we can make an old song sound modern by giving it a retro makeover! But of course they’re just trying to make a great version of a great song. And they’ve succeeded.
Also released on the ‘S.O.S’ single is the Stefan Storm remix of the song. And yes, that’s Stefan Storm of Sound of Arrows fame. It sounds pretty much exactly how you’d imagine a Sound of Arrows remix of a Linda Sundblad cover of an ABBA song to sound – ie pretty damn listenable. So get listening.
Here are both versions. And the single has been released outside of Sweden too, should you fancy it.
Radio Edit
Stefan Storm remix
