We showcased Frida Sundemo a few weeks ago, with ‘Anything’, another song from her EP 'Sounds in my Head', which was released on 29th May.
We pointed out that cinema seems to feature quite highly in her compositional matrix and ‘Anything’ has a lavish cinematic quality to it; and we referenced her to several leading lights in the business such as Aurora and Anna von Hausswolff. Also space, as in the celestial firmament. She really should get together with Nightwish’s Tuomas Holopainen, he’s obsessed with both space and film scores.
But just as ‘Anything’ was a departure from the previous track ‘Gazelles’ (also on the EP, she seems to have released most of it beforehand), which was a ballad, so ‘Backbone’, which is the EP’s focus track, goes off on another path again, with as close to a pure teenage pop song as you are likely to get, super tuneful from start to finish and her vocal fits it perfectly. This time I can’t help but compare her to Natalie Imbruglia. Just think ‘Torn’, you won’t go far wrong.
Assuming she is the common songwriter, its remarkable how one artist can come up with three songs that are so different and that’s without mentioning the other two tracks on the EP.
Ok, I don’t think she would necessarily have the same impact here with this song as Natalie did with ‘Torn’ but there’s no reason why she couldn’t. It pushes all the right buttons.
The only concern I have arises out of the fact that she’s a medical student. “You are the backbone of my heart” is anatomically wayward, Frida. Pay attention at the back there.