STOCKHOLM - Aftonbladet’s award Rockbjörnen (The Rock Bear) finalists have been selected. Among them are Marie Fredriksson (Best Female), Gyllene Tider (Best Album, Best Group and Best Song [Tuffa tider]) and Per Gessle (Best Male).

  Aftonbladet’s Per Bjurman reveals his favorites and tips in a column: Gyllene Tider should receive all three awards, while Lena Philipsson should get Best Female. Bjurman thinks that Magnus Uggla will get Best Male as Per hasn’t done anything solo this year (except those “three minutes at every concert”.)

  Rockbjörnen 2004 is the 26th Rockbjörn ever. Marie Fredriksson has received five awards during the years, Per Gessle three, Gyllene Tider two and Roxette six.

• Rockbjörnen site (In Swedish)

STOCKHOLM - “No more mr. Nice Guy,” Anders Nunstedt, columnist at Expressen writes. This week he stabs the most overrated albums of the year in the back. He doesn’t mean anything bad with it, really, it’s just that the most overrated albums of this year must be selected…

  Gyllene Tider’s “Finn 5 fel!” tops his list. Anders comments “Oddly enough the weakest tracks of the album, “Tuffa tider” and “Solsken” became the singles, and that makes the album bleaker. A quarter million copies sold are, in spite of the pop craftsmanship, unreasonably many.”



  Anders Nunstedt’s list in full:



1. Gyllene Tider: “Finn 5 fel!”

2. The Libertines: “The Libertines”

3. Mattias Alkberg BD: “Tunaskolan”

4. Jens Lekman: “When I Said I Wanted to be Your Dog”

5. Dizzee Rascal: “Showtime”

6. Usher: “Confessions”

7. Joss Stone: “Mind, Body & Soul”

8. Nerd: “Fly or Die”

9. Di Leva: “Tiden faller”

10. Loretta Lynn: “Van Lear Rose”

• Nunstedt’s column (In Swedish)

STOCKHOLM - Earlier this fall Per Gessle opened a door toward participating in the Swedish leg of the Eurovision Song Contest. “Why not,” he said, “that may be fun now that I’m older!” Swedish Television were overjoyed at the possibility of getting the world famous star as one of four jokers in the contest.

  Now Per has changed his mind and closed the door. “No I’m not interested. What if I write a song and don’t win? I don’t need that kind of stress,” he says to Aftonbladet. “It’s like Michael Schumacher joined a go-cart race. And lost! Everybody would think ’damn, what a loser!’.”

  Thomas Hall, project manager at SVT, is still hopeful: “I can see how he feels he has done enough this year, but maybe another year?”

  Photo: Thomas Evensson for TDR.

• Aftonbladet’s article (In Swedish)

STUTTGART - Marie Fredriksson’s song “2:nd Chance”, which hasn’t been officially released as a single in Germany, entered the listener’s charts of SWR3 at #10 tonight, being this the highest entry of the week.


  “2:nd Chance” was introduced to the listeners last Sunday and these have had time to vote for the song via Internet the whole week. SWR3, one of the biggest radio stations in Germany, presents the 33 songs that get the most votes during the week on Sundays from 19.00 to 22.00 CET.


  In addition, “2:nd Chance” entered at #3 in Jump Radio listener’s chart last week and moved up to #2 this week.


  Kiwein1 contributed to this article

• Jump
• SWR3

STOCKHOLM - The Gessle-penned song “Varmt igen” – released for the first time on Peter Jöback’s album “Jag kommer hem igen till jul” in 2002, and later included on Per’s “Mazarin” album – is featured on Jöback’s new live DVD “Jag kommer hem igen till jul - live från Cirkus.” His performance was recorded last December at the Cirkus theatre in Stockholm.


  Besides “Varmt igen”, the DVD – which is out now – features various tracks from Jöback’s album, such as the duet with Eva Dahlgren “Jag tror på dig”, and classic Christmas songs like “Ave Maria” and “O Helga Natt” (“O Holy Night”); as well as a “Disney Medley.”

• Peter Jöback’s official website
• Eva Dahlgren website

STOCKHOLM - A week after the documentary about Marie was broadcast on Swedish channel TV4, “The Change” climbs to #5 from #17 in the official Swedish album charts and sells gold.


  On the other hand, Gyllene Tider’s live DVD “GT25 Live! - En scen vid en plats i en stan” goes straight to #1 (on the music DVD chart, “only” #9 on the normal DVD chart) while the “GT25 Live!” CD enters at #28.


  Kiwein1 and daniel_alv contributed to this article

• Hitlistan.se

HELSINKI - Mats “MP” Persson, the guitarist of Gyllene Tider and a music producer, has once again managed to get one of his songs into the Finnish leg of the Eurovision song contest, as reported before. The song is written together with a Finnish songwriter, Patrick Linman, just like the song the year before.

  This year’s song, titled “Everything But Still Nothing,” will be performed by 23-year old Christian Forss. Forss became popular as a result of having been on TV’s “Idol” contest, in which he came in fourth.

  In the same contest, another male contestant, Antti Tuisku, performed “Spending My Time” which was later released on a CD. Forss rendered Bon Jovi’s “Living On A Prayer.”

  Mari contributed to this article.

• Introduction to the song (in Finnish)

“A Second Chance”, a documentary about Marie and her illness, was aired last week in Sweden and Finland. In the documentary, Marie and her husband Micke Bolyos are interviewed in their home and video clips shot by Micke are shown. The documentary also shows Marie in September performing songs from her new album live in a small club.

  Marie talks a lot about God in the interview. Her sister Anna-Lisa died in a car crash some years ago. “It took a long time before God and I were friends again,” Marie says. She also tells how God helped her to write the song “The Change”. “I wrote the song and the lyrics very quickly. Later it felt like someone else had written the song,” she said.

  “The Change” is a very important song to Micke, too. “There’s one song on the album I haven’t been able to listen to, and that’s the version of ’The Change’ with the symphony orchestra. The lyrics tell exactly how I felt after Marie’s illness was discovered,” he says.

  Marie is holding back tears when she thinks back to the events of September 11, 2002. “First I noticed losing vision in my right eye. The next thing I remember was Micke’s moaning voice. I had had an epileptic fit and hit my head very severely. Then I was on my way to hospital in an ambulance and the rest of the story you know already,” Marie explains.

  “The hardest thing was that I had to relearn to write and count. For a moment I thought I could never sing again, but fortunately that didn’t happen,” Marie says.

  The topic of the documentary is dark and Marie’s story is sad, but there is light. Marie says she has found strength from music, God and laughter.

  In perhaps the funniest part of the documentary, Marie’s seven-year-old son Oscar and his friend sing Per’s “Här kommer alla känslorna” in Marie’s home studio.

STOCKHOLM - In the sleeve of the triple platinum selling album “Finn 5 fel!” there was a contest, and now the winner has been selected. Cecilia Gyllin from Kungälv is the happy winner, who received her very own platinum award yesterday at a dinner with Gyllene Tider!

HALMSTAD - The Halmstad museum auctioned off several items from the last summer’s Gyllene Tider exhibition on Thursday. On sale were items that were either made by the museum or were acquired for the exhibition.

  Hallands Auktionsverk, the auction house, was quite crowded but there weren’t that many Gyllene Tider fans. Only 12-15 people had come only to attend the Gyllene Tider auction. However, the auctioneer seemed to be really happy that so many young people had come to the auction.

  Auctioned items included Gyllene Tider photos as well as five sculpted hands holding items “supposedly” discovered in an archelogical dig, including Per’s pen, Micke Syd’s drum stick and MP’s guitar pick. One of the most expensive items was a GT flag that reached 600 SEK (67 Euros) and Per Gessle’s autograph on a big yellow blanket that reached 1,000 SEK (112 Euros). Other members’ signatures were between 200-300 SEK (22-33 Euros). They also had three records for sale: two copies of the yellow “Billy” ep and one Peter Pop and the Helicopters single.

  According to Hallandsposten, the auction raised 35,000 SEK (about 3,900 Euros). The proceeds will go to the training of the museum staff.

• Hallandsposten article (in Swedish)
• Pictures from the exhibition