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| Annika Norlin wrote her first song at age 7. The song was about a beach. After that, she just never really stopped writing. She never let anyone hear her songs though - it simply didn't feel necessary.
18 years later, in January 2004, a friend who owned a small indie record label asked Annika to record a song for a coming compilation. (She'd been drunk at a party and finally sang Highschool Stalker to him.) She agreed to give him the song, and recorded "Highschool stalker" in a friend's bedroom. She got a website, placed the song on the Internet and called herself Hello Saferide as a tribute to an intelligent and warm hearted bus driver she'd met while studying in Willimantic, Connecticut.
Highschool Stalker led its own life on the Internet. Probably because the song included the lines I've been on the Altavista, I've been twice on the Yahoo (the song was obviously written before Google days. Ed), Annika soon received e-mails from search engine fanatics all over the world. How cool. She got airplay on Canadian radio, was played on British pop clubs and got numerous mentions on music sites, and mp3 blogs. Swedish national radio added Highschool Stalker to their playlist and several record labels contacted Hello Saferide. She signed with Razzia Records and started recording her full-length debut in the fall of 2004. The first single from the album, My Best Friend, a tribute to Annika's best friend and featuring lyrics like "Damn, I wish I was a lesbian, so I could fall in love with you" was an immediate indie hit.
After an intense summer of finishing the album with producer Andreas Söderlund, frontman of Niccokick, Introducing: Hello Saferide was released on September 28. New single If I Don't Write This Song, Someone I Love Will die is probably the only song about OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder) that has even gotten top rotation on Swedish radio. Musically, the song might remind you of Lemonheads in the early Nineties - not a coincidence, as Annika hails Evan Dando as her no 1 musical hero of all time.
Other songs on the album includes Long Lost Penpal, a duet with Firefox AK about whatever happened to the penpals we used to have, and San Francisco, an indie gospel anthem where Hello Saferide offers the solution to all your troubles - take a vacation to the Bay Area. The critics have been over-friendly, speaking about the most sympathetic album of the year and saying Jonathan Richman and Juliana Hatfield seems to have conceived a love child that was brought up in the north of Sweden.
Hello Saferide is currently touring around Sweden. |
Johnny Tennander
