Over the next few weeks on scandipop, we’ll be posting some quick chats we had with a number of the participants of Melodifestivalen, which kicks off in just under a month! They took place in person at the press conference at the end of last year. If you’ve missed our earlier interviews with the scandipopstars of Melodifestivalen 2011, click here for our chats with Dilba; Danny, Sanna Nielsen, and Loreen; and Le Kid, Jenny Silver, and Anniela.
First up is Linda Sundblad, who performs first in Heat 3 with her song ‘Lucky You’. We love Linda, her last album ‘Manifest’ is a favourite of ours, and so we wanted to find out exactly what her new song sounded like. And she couldn’t have given us a more exciting review of it – hello Abba!
scandipop: Welcome to Melodifestivalen Linda! You’re first time here.
Linda: Thank you, I need a big welcome! Yes, it’s my first time doing it.
scandipop: But you’ve been around and doing music for so long now, have you been asked to do it before but turned it down?
Linda: Yeah I’ve been asked for plenty of years. And I’ve been flattered every time I’ve been asked, but it’s never been the right time for me until now. Last year I was a little bit hungry to do it, and I was like ”oh, maybe I should do it, it’s so much fun”, and of course everything is so different about it these days. And then I got the question again this year, and after a lot of back and forth we got the perfect thing, and so yeah, we hit it off!
scandipop: And what’s the song gonna be like? Is it gonna be similar to what we heard on your most recent album?
Linda: A little bit yeah, a little bit. It’s called ‘Lucky You’, and lyrically it’s about how you should not think of yourself as a person who can not get what you want. You’re a good person. And if you’re together with someone and you’re a good person, then that someone you’re together with will see what you are. And the sound of the song is very happy, very glad. I wanted to write a song that was very Linda Sundblad, but also to compromise a bit for Melodifestivalen – you know, you get to perform it for three minutes and then it’s over. And I also thought about Abba when I wrote it. I wanted so much to have an Abba feel to it. I love the Swedish sound. I’m a bit fed up of the Katy Perry and the Lady GaGa sound, but I love those artists and I listen to them myself. That doesn’t mean that I wanna sound like them, but there are some influences from that sound too. But I definitely wanted to have the Abba sound, the traditional Swedish sound, the way they play the piano and the way they do the harmonies. They have a warmth in their songs. When you listen to Abba, you’re like ”ah, it’s Abba!”. Even if the song is ‘The Winner Takes It All’, it’s still about love. And that’s what I wanted to bring to my song too.
scandipop: Sounds fantastic! And will you be releasing a new album after the contest, or is that something that you’re going to be working on for the next few months, with a view to releasing it later in the year?
Linda: I have some songs, and I do write a lot, but I’m not sure I wanna work on a whole new album. Even if I’m number one, even if I win the whole thing, I’m still not sure if I wanna do an album. I loved to do ‘Manifest’, my latest album. It was great to put that out. But things work so differently already today. You can release a song there and there and there, and you can put together an EP, and that’s enough. And then you can put out an EP a year later. So I don’t wanna speculate about what I’m gonna do. This song is a miracle for me – I got goosebumps when I wrote it, with the melodies and everything. I get very emotional anyway, but with this I got the feeling that it’s just so so right, from the heart. So that makes me a winner! Whatever position it ends up in.
scandipop: Well I look forward to hearing it, you’ve given it a marvellous review!
Linda: Oh my God yeah! You’ll love it, I promise.
Afterwards, we got chatting to Linda again about ‘Manifest’. And about how much we love one track in particular on there – ‘Serotonin’. To our delight, she told us that it’s exactly the same people who were behind ‘Serotonin’ that are behind the new song ‘Lucky You’. So excitement levels are now even higher for us!
Below though, is her performing our absolute favourite Linda Sundblad track, ‘Let’s Dance’. That chorus is beyond belief!
Below that is her artist presentation from the SVT website.
