”At times I had to run past the place. But it gave me incredible energy for the songwriting!”

September found herself living with bit of an odd neighbour earlier this year. An odd neighbour in an odd year for an oddly talented artist.

When September – a.k.a. Swedish vocalist Petra Marklund – decided to relocate to London to recharge her batteries for a year or so she first ended up in quiet Notting Hill. When she after a while moved to the Fulham area the neighbourhood turned out to be a wee bit louder. Particularly patrons of a pub that caters to fanatical FC Chelsea supporters liked the idea of a blond Swedish songstress partying with them.

When September passed the (in)famous hooligan nest the cheers at times was a bit too enthusiastic. “But when I’d rushed by I arrived at my flat and mini studio loaded with one heck of an energy”, she now laughs at the memory.

If these exercises in southwestern London has affected the situation could be left unsaid. But fact is the upcoming (fourth) album “Love CPR” is the very first that contains co-writes from September.

Starting with her debut and immediate breakthrough single “La La La (Never Give It Up)” in 2003 most of the September songs has been productions by the Swedish team Jonas von der Burg/Niclas von der Burg/Anno Bahagavan.

This Stockholm trio has been involved also this time. But “Love CPR” – a title picked on the basis of the “somewhat hysterical love/hate topics in many songs” – also has a strong Anglo-Danish Connection. The British songwriter Wayne Hector – with more than 30 international number ones under his belt – respectively the Danish trio Jonas Jeberg/Lucas Secon/Cutfather. The last mentioned quartet is also the team behind the first single picked from the new album, “Resuscitate Me”.

September comments on her contribution:

– Finally I dared to let myself go. I don’t call myself a songwriter or lyricist. I call myself a “tune-copywriter” that has the fortune to cooperate with a lot of fantastically talented people. Almost all of those I’ve worked with have had some kind of connection to Kylie (Minogue). That’s a bit special since Kylie was kind of my role model when I grew up.

September was a teenager in her native Stockholm suburb when she became heavily influenced by Australian pop queen. Those were also the times when she became generally addicted to effective hit songs (“I still am, it doesn’t matter if it’s The Beatles or some Rumanian novelty thing…”). A fascination that after some years of somewhat failed auditions in 2003 led to the pop joint venture with Jonas von der Burg and his associates.

– It was my manager that brought us together. It worked perfectly from the very first minute and he had a bucket load of tremendous songs to pick from. “La La La” was among the first songs we recorded.

She recalls exactly the time and place when she first thought that she was on to something big:

– The first reactions to “La La La” were fantastic and my record company rushed it to radio. One day when I was having a tan outside my parent’s house I got a phone call. A friend called and shouted: “Listen to the radio! Listen now! “My song was on the most influential hit channel in Sweden. I can still remember that my immediate reaction was: “This station is much heavier than the local network that has given my friend’s band some airplay!” ha-ha…

“Satellite” was her first international hit. Originally released in Scandinavia in the summer of 2005 it swept through the European continent through the autumn of the said year. September also had a first glimpse of success in the major territories when “Satellites” got a low entry on the UK chart and climbed for a couple of weeks on the Billboard dance chart.

The real breakthrough though came with “Cry for You”. After a first release in Sweden in late 2006 the song conquered international charts for close to two years. It is now + 500 000 in the US and is by some distance the biggest Swedish hit in the States for more than a decade. The total international sales exceed two million copies.

“Can’t Get Over” has later on had close to the same tremendous success. Meaning that September now holds the status of being the bestselling Swedish export artist (Abba catalogue sales excluded).

When precisely did she realize that she had reached an international breakthrough?

– I have to mention two occasions. The first was when I performed in this legendary Chicago house club and everybody knew my songs. The other is when my record company manager proposed that we should have lunch in this supposedly “special” sky bar in New York. Just when I was to say: “Er, this place isn’t very special” he presented a bottle of champagne and told me that I’d entered the Billboard top 100. It was only like #74 but it still gave me this extraordinary wow!-feeling…

Through the last couple of years September’s been on a seemingly never expiring round-the-world-ticket. All sorts of promotion and performances had taken her to most of the continents. Most of the time she has travelled alone and then teamed up with local productions. But this will be upgraded with “Love CPR”:

– Up until now I’ve only had my own production in my biggest markets. Now we’re putting together my own stage team to travel with me. This is really excellent since I’m somewhat a control freak really keen on having all the details right.

Details are also a central thing when asked to summarize the new album:

– To me it’s extremely important how it sounds. In particular the vocals. It can’t just sound “good” - it has to sound “right”. An album track like “Music in Your Blood” is a good example on how you can stretch a good song to be tremendous if you work hard enough with how the vocals sound like.

But even more important are still the hunt for catchy tunes. September leaves us with a short version of her artistic guiding light:

– I learned early on that my thirst for catchy up-your-face songs means that I most probably will never be considered too hype-friendly. But it also means that I’m always very enthusiastic over the thumbs up that I get! I’m very excited about how everything has turned out.

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