MAGNUS BACKLUND - Never Say Never (2006)

Requested in "Request & Fill Corner" section...

Born in Linkoping, Sweden, Magnus Bäcklund had two dreams in life; one to be a commercial pilot and the other, to be a singer. Both become reality.
In the '90s moved to the U.S. for training as pilot. After completed, there was a recession in the airline industry, and started to search for a temporal job.
Music was always an important thing in Magnus' life, as hobby. He found an advertisement on the Internet where an American band were looking for a singer. Without that he really understood what had happened, Bäcklund was now the lead singer of the band Random Thoughts and had a whole new career ahead of him.
After recoding an album and playing clubs, Magnus decided return home.

Once in Sweden, Bäcklund heard about a new TV show that would be called Fame Factory. He was accepted and then went all the way to the finals, which he also won in December 2002.
The grand prize was a recording contract with Bert Karlsson's company, and with another student at Fame Factory, Jessica Andersson, formed the pop duo 'Fame', which sold tons of albums in Scandinavia.
Now the career took a crazy turn. They were suddenly superstars and found themselves constantly touring. After a couple of years, both Magnus and Jessica wanted to try a career of their own, so they decided to put Fame on hold.
This became obvious to the public when both participated in the Swedish Song Contest in 2006, with their own songs. Magnus made it to the big final and ended up on a fantastic fifth place with his song "The Name Of Love".



For his solo debut, Bäcklund wanted to test the genre that he thought suits him best; Rock&pop / European Melodic Rock, and in October 2006, released the CD "Never Say Never".
This is an album with the typical refined Swedish sound, showing a poppy European Melodic Rock approach as Arena (the Swedish band of ex-Bad Habit's Hal Johnston) with a touch of West Coast and AOR.
Curious to hear is a cover of "Changes", the Ozzy / Black Sabbath song in an interesting orchestrated version.

Magnus Bäcklund has a warm, melodious voice, with a fine range and personality.
Not in vain he was called to be one of the singers in the upcoming Sonic Station excellent CD (which I have listened entirely) to be released next February 24 by Frontiers Records.
"Never Say Never" offers good, light melodic rockers and delicate ballads, rounded by a first class production. Although the CD was released few years ago, seems out of print now.


01 - Perfect
02 - Crash and burn
03 - She
04 - Never say never
05 - Say your goodbye
06 - Sweet catastrophy
07 - It's not OK
08 - Changes
09 - Taken by surprise
10 - Look at you now
11 - The name of love

Magnus Backlund: Vocals
Micke Andersson (Private Eye, Tone Norum): Guitar
Figge Bostrom (Eva Dahlgren, Carola): Bass
Mattias Bylund (Erik Gronwall): Keyboards
Marten M.K. Eriksson: Keyboards, Guitar
David Bukovinsky: Strings
Christer Jansson, Magnus Sjolander: Drums
Thomas Lindberg (At the Gates): Backing Vocals
Lina Eriksson, Nana Hedin: Backing Vocals
... and many more.


MAGNUS BACKLUND - Never Say Never (2006)
.