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The American Ballad Book – Carl Winther

Danish Jazz

Let’s start in quiet mode, with Danish pianist extraordinaire, joined by Rune Fog-Nielsen and Anders Mogensen, recreating some of the jazz greats from The American Songbook. This is a lyrical low-key exploration of the ballad tradition. Nothing you haven’t heard before, but still so nice and unpretentious.

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AVTT/PTTN – The Avett Brothers & Mike Patton

Country Rock

Art Rock meets Americana! One of my favourite bands, solidly placed in my Music Hunter Wall of Joy, The Avett Brothers have joined forces with Mike Patton, a musical chameleon who has tampered with most genres, and a terrific vocalist. The result is mostly fascinating, lots of close harmony folk, but with borders pushed towards more futuristic music than we have heard from the Brothers before.

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COME CLOSER – TOMORA

Art Pop

Another strange cooperation – or should we say collusion? Pop sensation AURORA meets Tom Rowlands of Chemical Brothers, and dance music from the 1990s occur. This is mostly too way off for me, I have never been a great fan of Chemical Brothers and loved most of what AURORA has delivered. Still, I am strangely fascinated by the music on this album, very personal and true from both even when they merge their music together.

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Cruel World – Holly Humberstone

Indie Pop

Holly Humberstone is an English singer‑songwriter who broke through with intimate, bedroom‑pop. She has become known for vulnerable lyrics and introverted indie music, but with Cruel World, her second album, she moves into more mainstream pop, and although you recognize where she is coming from musically, I find this collection worthwhile to listen to.

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For The First Time, Again – Tyler Ballgame

Indie Pop

Tyles Ballgame has this powerful voice, one easily compares him with other power vocalists like Ian Gillian and Freddy Mercury, even though they’re very different. Yes, he gives us theatrical power ballads in between solid pop tunes, but Tyler Ballgame is his own man, and classic rock at its warmest.

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Full Circle – Tom Misch

Indie Soul

Let’s make a full switch. Londoner Tom Misch has little in common with Tyler Ballgame. His singing style is sweet and mellow, his songs simple and even introvert, the typical singer-songwriter, but adding a rare jazz and soul feel to indie music.

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Just Be You – Caroline Wiles

Singer Songwriter

Canadian singer Caroline Wiles is a mature artist, and her new album is supposedly comprised of songs offering encouragement and advice to her teenage daughter. This is a warm, soulful and encouraging record, and I can easily inderstand that it may serve as positive encouragement for more than teenagers.

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Middle of Nowhere – Kacey Musgraves

Contemporary Country

Nobody else cares, but I am quite proud of myself that I «discovered» Kacey Musgraves long before she grew to be a superstar. Now she is loved by «everyone», and any new release from her is well received, including her latest, Middle of Nowhere. And deservedly so, she is still churning out pop and country of the highest quality. Her melodic instints are intact, and even better: this sounds like the Kacey I first heard a decade ago.

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New Times Better Times – Sigrid Lygren

New Jazz

I found Sigrid Lygren because she was quoted as saying my daughter Karoline was one of her inspirations, that was very touching. But the album deserves to be listened to, this is a mix of jazz and pop and folk, creatively done and with an accomplished vocalist at the centre of it all.

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BONUS

The Best of Eurovision 2026

Half of you hate me doing this every year, but I keep on giving the Eurovision songs the same test: I listen to them without knowing what country they represent, without watching any videos or performances, and I pick the songs that I think offer the best songwriting, regardless of frills added later. It is after all a songwriter competition. This year I have ended up with the following: Switzerland, France, Norway, Malta, Belgium, Latvia, Portugal, Denmark, Luxembourg and Poland. Many of these didn’t even make it to the final. But then again, my task was not to pick the winner.

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Det året det var så bratt – Øystein Sunde

Norwegian Pop

For the first time, a Norwegian-language classic. This was one of the first LPs I bought, back in 1971, and it influenced my musical taste, my humour, my own music, for years to come. Sunde went on to be a true superstar in Norway, both because his quirky literal humour and intricate wordplays, his ability to laugh at ourselves without malice, but also because of his songwriting qualities and being an extraordinary instrumentalist, particularly as a guitarist. For my non-Norwegian listeners I have included a few of the instrumental tracks on the album, also because they illustrate the latter point.

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Harry Nilsson

The fourth artist to enter my Hall of Fame is none other than Harry Nilsson, which shouldn’t suprise anyone reading my blog. What a career! What a voice! He is credited with two major classic hits: «Without You» and «Everybody’s Talkin'» , but there is so much more to love, and I have added tracks from many of his albums throughout his career. Harry Nilsson was celebrated for his elastic, multi‑octave voice and studio inventiveness, despite famously avoiding touring and live performance. He only performed a few times, as guests of other performers. His most famous live moment is the only time he ever performed “Without You” on stage, when Ringo Starr brought him out during an All‑Starr Band show at Caesars Palace, Las Vegas, in 1992. He wrote pop that ranged from tender, piano‑led ballads, to Beatles‑infused pop, and a lot of hilarious and funny songs in the style of Monty Python. He also released an album of songs from the American Songbook, which proves his ability as one of the best crooners on the planet. The Beatles, Randy Newman, the Python boys and countless peers revered him, and John Lennon did a full album with him, unfortunately at a time when his life was chaotic and marked by heavy drinking. His lifestyle contributed to serious vocal damage and a gradual retreat from the spotlight in the late 1970s and 1980s. But he kept singing and recording, until he had a fatal heart attack in 1994. What a loss to music.