Taken from this week’s Future Pop mailer. Click here to subscribe.
Because the Scandinavians have adopted Spotify en masse as their method of music consumption, they have a larger influence on the streaming service’s global charts than you would expect for countries with small populations. This is great news, as they also produce much of the world’s best music. Last week I wrote about Danish group Lukas Graham, whose song 7 Years has reached international audiences thanks to Spotify, and Faded by Norway’s Alan Walker is set to follow the same path. 18-year-old producer Alan originally released the song as an instrumental in 2014 through the No Copyright Sounds label, which provides music for free use in content such as YouTube videos. The original version has almost 50 million YouTube views, but it’s the new vocal edit which has dominated Spotify’s global viral chart for the past month. This popularity has translated to official chart success in Norway and Sweden, where Faded is currently no.1, and it has also charted in Finland, Denmark and the Netherlands. It has topped the Shazam charts in Denmark, Norway and Sweden. The sweet vocals come from fellow Norwegian Iselin Solheim, though she’s not officially credited as a featured artist.
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60ItHLz5WEA]