Showing posts with label Jennifer Åkerman. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jennifer Åkerman. Show all posts

Sunday, August 19, 2012

Some of Fashion & Entertainment's "Tough Chicks in Luxury Packaging": Amber Heard, Jennifer Åkerman and Blake Lively; @AmberHeard, @jjakerman, @BlakeLively; Tuff Brud I Lyxförpackning




Terry Richardson: Behind the scenes with Amber Heard. http://nyti.ms/QKeiwL

Yes, Amber's smile above at 0:44 is pure perfection!


A friendly series of email flares sent up from both Park Slope and West End Avenue this morning alerted us to the exciting news:"Must-see Amber Heard photo essay in today's N.Y. Times "T" Magazine.
("T" being their Style magazine for those of you who are uninitiated.)
Immediately, we got to work and relayed the message via our 24/7 communication network...

This blog and its network of friends around the world thank our New York City friends who wish to remain anonymous for the thoughtful head's-up, and now have a must-buy Sunday Times print edition situation for the first time in quite awhile.
No promises, but we might have some photos here later in the day, after a coffee run later this afternoon from you-know-where.

Here's the basics:


The Well Rounded Amber Heard
By Kathryn Branch
August 17, 2012, 4:00 PM
The video of the behind-the-scenes photo shoot by Terry Richardson is at:
The last time I saw such a beautiful woman with a cute pet in a photo was... oh, that's right, this morning.

It came when I was checking my email and saw that well-grounded fave of the blog, LA-based blogger -LA Life- singer and Wilhemina NY model Jennifer Åkerman had just written about her latest magazine interview, with Uniprice Sweden, which she did while she's back in Sweden for a few weeks on vacation, and was photographed with her journalist sister's cat.

Her post: 
The actual interview and photo is titled, humorously in this case, Tuff Brud i Lyxförpackning
i.e. Tough Chick in Luxury Packaging, and is at:

This title is a reference to a very popular Swedish song by singer Lill-Babs in 1961, a song title that over the past 50 years has also gotten a life of its own as a saying or metaphor, usually as a positive. 
It helps, of course, that the word "brud" can also be used in Swedish for bride as well as babe and -wait for it- chick.

PontiacGrandPrix63 video: Lill-Babs - Tuff Brud I Lyxförpackning (1961)
Uploaded April 17, 2011. http://youtu.be/ECCIF55U-gU

What's old becomes new again in 2010 as Petter keeps it real with Lill-Babs watching from the dinner table.
You don't have to know any Swedish to see why this is both clever and funny, so watch the whole thing!  


YetAnotherStranger1 video: Petter Alexis Askergren sings "Tuff brud i lyxförpackning" on TV4 Sweden's "Så mycket bättre" (So much better) Full song! Uploaded November 14, 2010. http://youtu.be/dwWAR0-dfP8


Hon är en tuff brud i lyxförpackning. 
En tuff brud i snyggt fodral...

(She is one tough chick in luxury packaging. 
A tough chick in the attractive case...)

The best American pop culture comparison might be Ann-Marget in Kitten with a Whip, where the title of that 1964 film, co-starring John Forsyth, has been appropriated hundreds and hundreds of times for other purposes, especially as the title of an article in popular magazines of nearly every subject you can think of.

tonypatti video: Kitten With a Whip -Famous Someday -Ann-Marget and John Forsyth (1964). http://youtu.be/B9xrcZKvUUg

Jen's popular and oh-so-catchy song from last year with her band Bella Tech


Bella Tech - Summer Song
The Los Angeles-based band that features lead vocals by Jennifer Åkerman. http://youtu.be/0Q5x7NfbhP0

Here's the video for her newest solo single, from this summer, Silent Killer...


bellsoto video: "Silent Killer" - Jennifer Akerman, directed by Bell Soto, Uploaded June 2, 2012. http://youtu.be/iYtmjKodsUM


By the way, with the demise of the LA Times Magazine due to budget cuts at parent Tribune Company, one of the few places where yours truly could oftentimes find that delicious nugget of pop culture information that confirmed his intuition and sense of things in the entertainment universe while living in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. and South Florida, I now have one less dependable, albeit-celeb-heavy, source of information. 
The news about this forced me to shed a tear of sadness.

Regular readers of the blog might recall they ran that excellent piece in their April issue that I linked to here in my post of April 11, 2012 titled, After Stieg Larsson, whom? April 2012 LA Times Magazine features stories on amazing Stockholm and some prominent Swedish crime novelists -and explains why you should be reading them!

Their cover subject for their last issue, in June, was also a favorite of this blog, the delightful Blake Lively.
http://www.latimesmagazine.com/2012/06/savage-beauty.html

I really did mean to bring this up when it was first announced, because it's quite a telling example of what's going on in the American economy right now, as advertising dollars migrate to non-print locales, but...

Los Angeles Times to discontinue LA, its Sunday magazine
The magazine, which came out monthly, will print its final issue June 3.
By Alana Semuels, Los Angeles Times
May 16, 2012|
http://articles.latimes.com/2012/may/16/business/la-fi-times-magazine-20120516

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@AmberHeard  http://twitter.com/AmberHeard



http://amberheardofficial.com/

@jjakerman http://twitter.com/jjakerman





Listen to Jennifer here: http://soundcloud.com/jennifer-akerman


Friday, August 19, 2011

Florrie, our favorite British 'Next Big Thing,' is back in the studio recording -next Thursday she's flying to L.A. to work on her next project


Florrie - Begging Me (2011). Directed by Price James.

"I won't lose the battle, not in love, not in war, cause I got something to fight for..."

Florrie Arnold, our favorite British 'Next Big Thing,' is back in the studio: reading, writing & recording. Hurrah!

The dynamic singer/drummer/guitar-player from Bristol is shown above performing "Begging Me," the infectious song that I've mentioned previously, here, which in these dog days of sweltering August, is STILL the number-one song I hum to myself in the car while stuck in South Florida traffic gridlock, of which we have so much, giving me so many more chances than a normal American to croon or hum it.

I've avoided a few chances this summer to mention what's new with Florrie because it hasn't really risen to the point of something worthwhile visually I could share, per se.

But early this morning, around 2 a.m., I received her latest blog post and it contained the news that I and her other fans have been waiting for, now that her six song Experiments EP has been out for a while. (Songs can STILL be listened to FREE on her website, bought on ITunes.)
http://florrie.com/home/2011/8/17/florrie-back-in-the-studio.html

After another few days of being in the studio, and then a photo shoot for the cover of her next album, she's flying out to L.A. next Thursday to work with some talented folks who are aiming to help her on her next project and, hopefully, get her the sort of attention she deserves on this side of the Atlantic.


Florrie - I Took A Little Something (2011). Directed by Justin Wu.

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention two things that I've thought of a lot the past few months, starting with when I first watched Robyn perform and dazzle on ABC-TV's Jimmy Kimmel Live show, which I wrote about on April 14th in a post I titled
Robyn - Call Your Girlfriend & Dancing on My Own - ABC-TV's Jimmy Kimmel Live; 13-Year-Old Girls Ruining American Idol Vote -and U.S. film industry!
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2011/04/robyn-call-your-girlfriend-dancing-on.html

Florrie would absolutely KILL on that show, esp. dressed as she is in the video in Dolce & Gabbana.
She'd positively send some of the audience into orbit and leave the rest of them slack-jawed.

The second thing is, IF Florrie has the time and gets the chance -are you listening out there?- since I know that she will be back in L.A. from Skåne by then, could someone from her team please ring up Jennifer Åkerman and arrange to meet Jen somewhere so that she can show Florrie around the town she now knows so well?
It would do everyone involved some good, not least of all, music fans.

A couple of helpful introductions here and there, interspersed with a few hours devoted to bouncing creative ideas off of one another, some shared laughs and a few drinks over dinner to see if there's something these two talented songbirds could do together in the future...
I'd kill to hear a few duets from them somewhere on Sunset... table for four, up near the front if it's alright with you.
Just thinking out loud...

But just because I'm thinking out loud here, doesn't mean that it's still not a VERY GOOD idea!

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My first post on Florrie was back on March 5th, 2011, titled, Say hello to Florrie - She's musically ship-shape in Bristol fashion, always equipped with a beat & melody -and has a voice & face you won't forget, http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2011/03/say-hello-to-florrie-shes-musically.html


Wednesday, August 3, 2011

Speaking of catchy summer songs... Bella Tech - Summer Song; Jennifer Akerman @jjakerman


Bella Tech - Summer Song
http://youtu.be/0Q5x7NfbhP0

A very, very catchy song from the Los Angeles-based band that features lead vocals by Jennifer Åkerman.

When I listen to it, I can think of about a dozen different ways that this song or snippets of it could be perfectly integrated into an ad campaign; as an intro into an all-night radio talk show; in a film, as a song heard on the radio by a young female protagonist driving by herself thru the interstate roads of the American West at night to surprise someone -causing either introspection or maybe even a narrative flashback...





2014 Update:
Jennifer's popular blog about her adventures in LA as a model, singer, blogger and keen observer of the American scene was formerly at http://blogg.veckorevyn.com/lalife/

Listen to Jennifer here:
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