More Modern Short Stories From...

Hello Saferide

Ich habe diese Interview mit Annika Norlin im Dezember 2006 für das Svenskt Rock Arkiv geführt. Ich dachte mir immer ich bewahre es einfach auf, bis Hello Saferide ein neues Album veröffentlicht, ohne zu Ahnen, dass es so lange dauern würde und nun ist es endlich soweit. Es halt wohl durch den großen Erfolg von Säkert in Schweden, doch etwas länger gedauert. Wer meinen ersten Post über Hello Saferide nochmals lesen möchte kann dies an dieser Stelle tun.

Das Interview ist in Englisch, aber ich hoffe das bereitet niemanden größere Schwierigkeiten, aber zunächst viel Spaß mit dem neuen tollen Song "Anna"



Hej Annika, can you please tell me something about Hello Saferide? A small history about who you are, how it started, how many releases, etc.?

HS is really only me. I've been writing songs all of my life but I never played them to anyone until coincidence had me record "Highschool stalker" in a friend's bedroom three years ago. I put the song on the internet, people liked it, I recorded an album, people liked that as well, and I got a band together: Andreas Söderlund (who's also the producer of most HS stuff), Maia Hirasawa, Fredrik Hultgren, and Jens Lagergren.So far, we've released one full-length album, one EP, and a couple of songs for compilations.

Where do you get your inspiration from when you are writing your songs?

Everyday events, like listening to people talking on the bus.

I really like you lyrics. I always liked songs that are telling short stories. Are your songs in some kind autobiographic or mainly fictional?

Thank you! They're almost always fictional. If my songs were about my own life, they would all be about watching TV.

What is your opinion about music blogs, MySpace and the opportunities of the internet in general?

I like to compare it to a child becoming a teenager and her parents saying: "We've thought about it, and we decided we are against you growing up." It's going to happen and your only choice if you're going to be happy about it or not. Luckily, I am. I love finding new music on the net. Of course, there are a lot of downsides - like professional musicians (myself definitely not included in this category) not finding ends meet anymore, and how pictures, live recordings, and rumours are easy access to everyone without the persons involved having any say in it.

Can you please tell a remarkable story occuring Hello Saferide, probably on tour?

Ahem... there's nothing really remarkable about us. We don't do any drugs, we don't sleep around. We have a book circle, god damn it! We eat healthily on the road and we mostly sit in our van having therapy sessions with each other while listening to Eighties movie themes.

Can you please share some experiences from your tour in Japan?

Tokyo was amazing and hopefully, we'll get to go back real soon. We only played three shows, but people seemed to really like it and we got a record deal with a really nice Japanese label from it. The audience seems to have enjoyed the fact that you can easily hum along to our music, but they were terrible at clapping hands during songs.

You were recently playing quite a lot of shows even in Japan and Great Britain. Do you have problems combining your job as musicjournalist at P3 with your own musical career? Or is it just a matter of organisation and on the other hand much more helpful? Have you been thinking about only to concentrate on you musical career?

I work as a freelance journalist (and have been working part time with a radio show on P3). So far it's been perfect combining the two as you don't make a lot of money making music, so I definitely need to work with other things as well. I'm glad I never became an... engineer, or whatever, as that would have been a lot harder combining that job with being a songwriter.

Razzia doesn’t have any distribution in Germany, wouldn’t it be interesting for you to release and tour in Germany as well?

Of course. We're working on it.

When can we expect a new record from you?

I've recorded a record in Swedish with another project of mine called Säkert due for release in February. This, however, doesn't sound like HS at all. For new HS music, I've written a lot of songs but it'll probably be a year or so before anything is released.

Tack så mycket