International Music Journey, part 2: rock

H.E.A.T. - Living On The Run (Sweden)

We start off with some "light" rock from Sweden. This song by H.E.A.T. reminds me a lot of the rock-music that was made by long-haired rockers in the 1980s. Lead singer of the band is Erik Grönwall, who won the Swedish version of Idols in 2009. Immediately after winning this talent contest he recorded some pop-songs, but he quickly decided this was not the kind of music he wanted to make. In August 2010 he joined rock band H.E.A.T., after their old lead singer decided to leave the band. Two years after the change of lead singer H.E.A.T. scored their biggest hit so far with this song.

Shanon - Broken (Estonia)

Shanon is a pop-rock band from Estonia. The band announced to split up on 1 April 2010, but this turned out to be an April Fools Day prank, because one month later the band released a new single called "Broken". Like all of their previous songs, "Broken" became a big hit in Estonia. The band never reached any success outside of Estonia, but they are certainly good enough to be shared in this post.

Wig Wam - Gonna Get You Someday (Norway)

If you are (like me) a big fan of Bon Jovi, you're going to love this next song. Critics say that the idea for this song was stolen from the song "You Give Love A Bad Name", but one can't deny that this song rocks. Even though the video makes it look like this song is from the 1980s, it was made only a couple of years ago. Interesting fact: Wig Wam represented Norway in the Eurovision Contest of 2005 with the song "In My Dreams". After a great rock performance that reminded me of KISS they finished on a respectable 9th place in the final.

Ewa Farna - Cicho (Poland)

Ewa Farna is a talented singer who started singing at a very early age. At the age of 13 she already released a first album in Czech Republic (where she was born). In 2009, at the age of 16, she recorded "Cicho" which is about a boring relationship in which both partners don't have a lot to say to eachother.
Unfortunately, like with most teenage pop stars, things went from bad to worse with Ewa in recent years. She was arrested in May 2012 after having caused a car accident while driving drunk. Let's hope she gets through this period in one piece and continues to make good music.

Volbeat - Still Counting (Denmark)

This last song may be a bit too much for some of you, but I felt I needed to include a hard-rock song as well for all those real rockers who are reading my blog and were looking forward to this post. :) Try it out, and if you don't like it, then in two weeks I will write another post with a theme that may suit your taste better.

International Music Journey: Kickoff!

Since I'm not travelling so often any more I need to find something else to write about on my blog. After travelling, music is my second big passion so the choice for a new topic was an easy one for me. In this post I will introduce you to a new series on my blog. Every two weeks I will share music from all over the world that is not known to the big crowd (yet), but should certainly be shared. Every post (except for today's one) will be related to a certain theme. The list of themes is mentioned at the bottom of this post, now let's start with the music.

Lolita Jolie - Non Non Non (Poland)

To start off, I present you with Lolita Jolie (real name: Claudia Cislek). She's from Poland, but living in Germany and she's singing a song in French. Are you still following? Good. Lovely Lolita got her passion for the French language from her grandfather and is now conquering Europe with her music in this language. Her music is addictive from the very first minute you listen to it and is likely to stay in your head for the rest of the day.

Are you still hearing this last song in your head now? You can't say I didn't warn you for that... You can try to get it out of your head again by listening to this next song, which is something completely different.

Molly Sandén & Christopher -  A Little Forgiveness (Sweden + Denmark)

We move on towards a beautiful duet of ISC-winner Christopher and Swedish Molly Sandén. I have no knowledge about musical compositions, but you can hear in this song that the producer of this song is extremely talented and knows what he is doing. This is the perfect modern pop song: it's catchy, sung by an attractive singer (Christopher received 36 of his 41 points in ISC#4 from females, even though there were more male than female voters) and the listener can easily get captured by the beauty of the song. The highlight of the song is when Molly and Christopher sing the second chorus together at 1:40.

Click here to check the song out. The link will open in a new window.

Linda Hesse - Ich Bin Ja Kein Mann (Germany)

I discovered this next song only last week and I love it already. Young and pretty Linda Hesse sings about her response to the tough break-up with her ex-boyfriend who didn't seem to care about her feelings at all. Her first response was to cry (after all: she's not a man), but she quickly realized that it made no sense to cry over a man. She then decided it's more fun to deal with a break-up by going to a party in a tight dress and flirting with random guys all night long.

List of themes:
1. Introduction (3 February)
2. Rock (17 February)
3. Foreign languages - traditional music (3 March)
4. South Africa (17 March)
5. To be announced later (31 March)
6. Foreign languages - pop (14 April)
7. Asian pop music (28 April)
8. To be announced later (12 May)
9. Covers of internationally known songs (26 May)
10. To be announced later (9 June)

If you have any internationally unknown songs from your country (or any other country) related to one of these themes, please let me know. If the song makes it to my blog in the end, I will mention your name in that post to thank you for your input.