A thing about Agnes... (not Agyness, not Agnew)

This is Agnes off-of current-UK chart success. She is from Sweden and looks like Leona Lewis and Kate Hudson's lovechild. We're usually HOT ON THE BALL when it comes to foreign popstars, having in the past had the lowdown on girl bands from Germany, pop minxes from Norway and petite tartlets from Japan, but oddly this one slipped under our radar. Nevertheless we are now catching up.

Basically she won Swedish Idol and is already on album No. 3 (having sold over 100,000 records in her native land). Her single "Release Me" is all shades of pop-amazing. The jutting strings, the soaring melody, the lyric about a 'dictophone' (we hope that's not a metaphor).

It's the kind of gay europop that only Madonna had managed to make remotely commercially successful in the UK in recent years... that is until Lady GaGa came along. Now, of course, the current europop explosion is underway and expect a lot more of this to come. That is, of course, unless this is just treated as a novelty dance track and the genre is hitherto ignored by the UK public.

*As with everything waits to see...*

Recommendations
"Release Me" - Agnes