It’s been a while since we’ve written about Emilia De Poret (September 2008 in fact), but she’s back in our mind for two reasons. Firstly, the song that made us first fall for her, ‘Pick Me Up’, has become a dance hit in the US. It’s climbing the Billboard dance charts week by week, and is now at a new peak of number 25. The American clubs seem to be loving old Swedish hits at the moment, BWO’s ‘Right Here Right Now’ was top 10 in the same chart this time last month!
And secondly, and the reason we’re writing about her again, is that she’s about to unleash a new single in Sweden, ‘Now Or Never’. We have a special fondness for this particular song that dates back a few years. And we think that a lot of you will probably know it too, without realising.
We first fell in love the song when it was called ‘Out From Under’ and sung by a girl called Joanna Pacitti. It was a pleasant discovery as we were listening to the soundtrack of the Bratz movie. YES, we liked the Bratz movie, what of it?! And we also knew we’d like the soundtrack, because we love pop music aimed at 10 year old American girls! Actually, while we’re on the subject, we really can’t recommend enough the Bratz ‘Rock Angelz’ album. It was out a few years ago and lead by the single ‘So Good’. We know it might seem ridiculous that anyone would enjoy an album sung by the animated version of a series of children’s toy dolls, but it really is great! Mostly written, produced, and sung by Scandinavians too!
Where were we?….Yes, ‘Out From Under’. A beautiful little ballad delivered by the fragile vocal of Joanna. We listened to it a lot, but assumed it would always be a one off from the artist who would never be heard from again. Incidentally (here comes another digression, sorry), Joanna WAS heard from again. She was part of a scandal on American Idol a couple of years back. She’d made it through to the live shows but then a few shows in, it was discovered that she’d had a recording contract before, which isn’t allowed under American Idol rules. Some people were ‘up in arms’ about it saying that she should be disqualified, others quite rightly pointed out that she’d never actually had a hit, and that 99.9999% of viewers would have no idea who she is. Unfortunately though, she was disqualified in the end.
So…..’Out From Under’……Yes, anyway, we’d gotten used to the idea that ‘Out From Under’ was just this one-off, unknown, hidden gem of a track that we could forever enjoy. Until we saw the leaked tracklisting of Britney Spears’ ‘Circus’ album – which included a track called…………’Out From Under’! We wondered if it might be the same song, and yes it was. So the song was brought to the masses, like it deserved to be. Incidentally (apols), Britney wasn’t the only artist to cover it. A few months later, Ali Campbell of UB40 launched his latest album with ‘Out From Under’ as the lead single.
And then, late last year (back to the actual point of this article), Emilia De Poret comes along with her new song and its accompanying video, ‘Now Or Never’, which is a re-written version of ‘Out From Under’! We love her version though, it’s nice to hear a different take on the song. Plus the video is a stunning affair too. We have no idea what has taken the Swedish record label so long to release it, given that it was all ready to go late last year. Perhaps they were waiting for a ‘story’ to interest the Swedish press, which is what her new US success can be translated into. But here it is;
Enjoy!