Shawn Mendes ain’t Scandipop. He ain’t. But on his new album ‘Handwritten’ released this week, there’s a pretty little ditty called ‘Air’ – which features Norwegian popstar and former Norwegian Idol winner Astrid Smeplass.
Astrid! Precisely. She rebranded late last year by dropping her surname and developing a whole new sound. Bye bye to the country music flavours of her debut ‘Shattered’, and hello to an altogether more mainstream ‘2am’. And ‘2am’ has been getting a lot of international attention recently, so we’re expecting even bigger things from her in 2015. And it looks like ‘Air’ is the start of that.
What’s ‘Air’ like? A hugely charming, very cute acoustic duet. Not a ballad though, but more a cheeky, wry, up-tempo number. She was so right to say yes to this.
How has it been received so far? Well Norway is downloading the track in their droves so far, of course. So that’s good. And in the US, the album debuted at the top of the iTunes chart straight away.
