It’s Saade, so Saade…

Charismatic Swedish beauty Eric Saade caused an international furore (well, a large Facebook group) with his appearance presenting the scores for Sweden in Eurovision last month so who knows what could have happened if he had actually been chosen as the Swedish entry. Maybe we’d all be trying to befriend Stockholmers instead of Hamburgers just in case Eurovision 2011 turns out to be worth attending.

Until his appearance in Melodifestivalen 2010 (including the famous rain moment pictured above), I must admit I had never paid any attention to Eric Saade. As you could probably guess from their name, his previous boyband What’s Up were so terrible that I presumed there was no chance any of them could be secret superstars. However, when I heard his Melodifestivalen entry Manboy and, around the same time, his super-catchy debut single Speechless, I wished I had been watching him a little more closely. There hadn’t been a Swedish boy singer so cute, charming and poptastic since the great Zelmerlöw!

Although Manboy didn’t win Melodifestivalen it became a huge hit, staying at no.1 in the Swedish charts for 3 weeks. He also won the hearts of many of my fellow bloggers and pop fans, so there was quite some excitement when his album was finally released last month. Despite some mockery of his ridiculous song titles (e.g. Why Do We Need Fashion!? – punctuation popstar’s own) the album was very well-received, and I for one have been listening to it more than anything else I’ve purchased recently.

After a few weeks I have several clear favourites, unsurprisingly the tracks written by Fredrik Kempe, creator of all Måns Zelmerlöw’s best moments. My no.1 listening choice is It’s Gonna Rain, particularly for the brilliant take-off noises near the beginning, but I also love the big ballad Break of Dawn, set to be the next single. Both of those are Kempe creations, but I do have one favourite, the BSBs-esque (Eric sounds spookily like Nick Carter at times) Say It, which was written by unfamiliar names Gustav Efraimsson, Hayden Bell and Sarah Lundbäck.

There are a few songs so inane and insipid I scramble for the ipod controls every time they come on, but the album is much more consistent then either Måns or Ola’s first attempts so I can’t wait to hear what Eric will do next. Whatever happens, he’s sure to be a beloved fixture of Melodifestivalen from now on. Personally I’m hoping he joins up with Måns and Darin, as in the photo below, to create the world’s greatest boyband. Since their initials are EMD, I propose they replace the existing EMD so we can pretend that embarrassment on Swedish pop music never happened. If this trio entered MF 2011, they’d surely win. Mr Kempe, get in the studio quick!