Pop Is Not The Enemy: Track of the Week

It's only the bloody track of the week!

For the first 'Track of the Week' we're taking a trip to Sweden, home of perfect pop music, uncommonly attractive people and winter-time alcoholism.

The singer of said song is Amanda Fondell, I know what a name. She found fame as the winner of the 8th series of (Swedish) Idol where she lent her unique pipes to such pop atom bombs as 'Womanizer' by Dame Britney of Spears and Outkast's 'Hey Ya' (if you're not singing "Shake it, shake it, shake it like a Polaroid picture" in your head right now you're dead to me).

Her look and voice are not your average Idol contestant (if anyone mentions Diana 'Dr Claw' Vickers I will look for you, I will find you and I will kill you), and neither were her song choices. In the final she was pitted against shiny boy next door Robin Stjernberg (who went on to represent Sweden in Eurovision on home turf in 2013) and her two covers were Blur's 'Song 2' and 'Made Of' by Swedish electro house act Nause (the video to which you will find cunningly hidden in this article) - beat that Leona Lewis!

Following her win she released the conveyor belt talent show winner's single and album 'All This Way', which sound exactly as you would expect. The album contained such hidden gems as 'True Colours' and '(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction', I'm genuinely shocked these songs don't get covered more often - I love the smell of sarcasm in the morning.

2012 was the year that things started to change, she released the song that is our first 'Track of the Week', the lovingly titled 'Bastard'.

Built around lovely shuffling drum beats, a glacial and suitably Scandinavian synth and a catchy-as-hell vocal line in some 'oohs', it gets extra pop points for the amazing opening to the chorus:

"Everybody tells me you're a (bastard),

Your mama even told me you're a (bastard)."

With this she started to move away from being just another talent show winner towards what she was always capable of being, a pop behemoth.

Ladies and gents I give you the first 'Track of the Week' Amanda Fondell's 'Bastard, assume the brace position.