Big Band Week, Disco Week, Love Songs Week, Number 1s Week. Whatevs. Swedish Idol have proved themselves to be infinitely better at choosing themes for their weeks than what we’re used to in the UK with The X Factor. They even trumped this weekend’s potentially amazing scenario where current contestants perform previous contestants’ later hits – by a few weeks ago having the same theme but having the participants sing the actual hits of former singers from the show, as opposed to lame winner’s singles, or songs that they’d performed on their own series.
But last weekend Swedish Idol raised the bar even higher, by introducing Songwriting Week. The remaining four contestants were paired up with some of Sweden’s most esteemed and successful songwriters, and tasked with composing a song. Amazing. What an opportunity for them. And what an opportunity for us to get four new pop songs to enjoy.
Tony Nilsson (Darin, Selena Gomez, Conor Maynard, Agnes), Peter Boström (Loreen, Danny Saucedo, Ola, Martin Stenmarck), Thomas G:son (Carola, Lili & Susie, Martin Rolinski, Linda Bengtzing), Jakke Erixson & Oscar Holter (Christina Aguilera, BWO, Alex Saidac) were all called upon to assist the hopefuls. Some of our favourite songwriters, and an undeniably impressive coup for the concept.
In truth though, as it turned out, out of the four songs only two were really any good. But they were really REALLY good. And still – it’s a fantastic idea for a theme that we’d love to see them incorporate again in future years, and which we’d also love to see other shows around the world tackle too.
Here then, are the four songs (Elin Bergman and Erik Rapp being the two really good ones).
Elin Bergman: ‘The Fire’ (studio version)
Erik Rapp: ‘Wild’ (studio version)
Jens Hult: ‘Killing Me’ (studio version)
Kevin Walker: ‘Dreaming’ (studio version)
