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MUSIC

Italian opera singer wins prestigious music prize

Italian mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli and Swedish music producer Max Martin have been announced as this year's winners of Sweden's prestigious Polar Music Prize.

Published: 10 February 2016 10:45 CET
Italian opera singer wins prestigious music prize
Cecilia Bartoli. Photo: Dieter Nagl/AFP

The award will be handed out by Sweden's King Carl XVI Gustaf at Stockholm's concert hall on June 16th.

Opera singer Cecilia Bartoli was born in Rome, Italy, and has interpreted classical composers ranging from Mozart to Rossini.

“With a vocal range of three octaves and a unique ability to live a role with fullness of expression, [she] has developed song as an art form,” said the jury.

Max Martin is one of the world's most successful producers, boasting a resume that includes creating massive hits for artists such as Britney Spears, Justin Bieber and Taylor Swift. He becomes the first Swede to ever receive the prize.

“Right now, at this very moment, someone, somewhere in the world will be singing a hit song written and produced by Max Martin. With his ear for song melodies, his musical precision and craftmanship, he has refined and developed the world's popular music,” read the Polar jury's announcement.

The Polar Music Prize was created in 1989 by Abba's legendary manager, the late Stig 'Stikkan' Anderson.

Last year the one-million kronor prize ($119,000) was awarded to American queen-of-country-music Emmylou Harris and Scottish percussionist Evelyn Glennie.

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CULTURE

New songs mark sixth anniversary of French star Johnny Hallyday’s death

Fans of the late Johnny Hallyday, "the French Elvis Presley", will be able to commemorate the sixth anniversary of his death with two songs never released before.

Published: 17 November 2023 09:05 CET
New songs mark sixth anniversary of French star Johnny Hallyday's death

Hallyday, blessed with a powerful husky voice and seemingly boundless energy, died in December 2017, aged 74, of lung cancer after a long music and acting career.

After an estimated 110 million records sold during his lifetime – making him one of the world’s best-selling singers -Hallyday’s success has continued unabated beyond his death.

Almost half of his current listeners on Spotify are under the age of 35, according to the streaming service, and a posthumous greatest hits collection of “France’s favourite rock’n’roller”, whose real name was Jean-Philippe Leo
Smet, sold more than half a million copies.

The two new songs, Un cri (A cry) and Grave-moi le coeur (Engrave my heart), are featured on two albums published by different labels which also contain already-known hits in remastered or symphonic versions.

Un cri was written in 2017 by guitarist and producer Maxim Nucci – better known as Yodelice – who worked with Hallyday during the singer’s final years.

At the time Hallyday had just learned that his cancer had returned, and he “felt the need to make music outside the framework of an album,” Yodelice told reporters this week.

Hallyday recorded a demo version of the song, accompanied only by an acoustic blues guitar, but never brought it to full production.

Sensing the fans’ unbroken love for Hallyday, Yodelice decided to finish the job.

He separated the voice track from the guitar which he felt was too tame, and arranged a rockier, full-band accompaniment.

“It felt like I was playing with my buddy,” he said.

The second song, Grave-moi le coeur, is to be published in December under the artistic responsibility of another of the singer’s close collaborators, the arranger Yvan Cassar.

Hallyday recorded the song – a French version of Elvis’s Love Me Tender – with a view to performing it at a 1996 show in Las Vegas.

But in the end he did not play it live, opting instead for the original English-language version, and did not include it in any album.

“This may sound crazy, but the song was on a rehearsal tape that had never been digitalised,” Cassar told AFP.

The new songs are unlikely to be the last of new Hallyday tunes to delight fans, a source with knowledge of his work said. “There’s still a huge mass of recordings out there spanning his whole career,” the source said.

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