The Corner

The Swedish Grammy Award winning, four-time nominee, Christian Walz is one of the few Swedish artists who successfully fuse the distinctive elements of modern R&B, soul and pop into a natural whole. As a vocalist he has been praised for his unique expression, one that, without effort, vacillates between traditional song and soulful falsetto. The fall of 2009 Walz returned with his long awaited third album, The Corner. The new album is comprised of 12 songs that possess the unusual quality of being both immediately gratifying and surprising, revealing new delicious detail every time the song is replayed. The tracks were for the most part written during, and are concerning, Walz’s travels, whether they be about events from New York City, Havana, or Gothenburg, or even just from being camped out in a car on the Stockholm island of Djurgården (for so long, in fact, that the police repeatedly stopped and asked if everything was all right). It’s been four years since the highly praised former album “Paint By Numbers” was released, from which two tracks made true hit status, “Wonderchild” and “Never Be Afraid Again”. The first mentioned was the first hit, but with time the second has surpassed ”Wonderchild” in the number of times played on radio. “Paint By Numbers” also gave Walz his four Grammy nominations: album of the year, composer of the year, producer of the year and male pop artist of the year, the last of which won him a Grammy. “I still saw myself as a boy then,” smiles the 30 year old father of two, “but now I feel like a man.” In the past with Walz all song writing and production has happened simultaneously. This time all the songs were written before he and his co-producer started to “dress” them. This makes the basic song structure clearer, strengthening the melody and making the songs more immediately gratifying. Walz’s characteristic feel for fantastic detail is still there, he is still a perfectionist and carries with him a tendency to delay sleeping and eating until a mix is finished, or re-recorded. “I don’t give up until I am one hundred percent satisfied, it’s just who I am. But it’s important to point out that it’s not the most slick or polished work that I’m looking for. Perfection for me can be made up of ‘ugly’ sounds that can perfectly suit a particular song. I’m working on learning to identify that one particular detail that bothers me in a song [and fixing it] instead of throwing away the whole song.” The first single out is the song “What’s Your Name?”, and the new album is literally teeming with potential follow-up singles. “Producer” is a seductive R&B ballad, radio-pop song “Atlantis” still has its reggae-influenced backbeat piano from when it was first written, while at the same time, other songs have been totally made over. You’ll find acoustic guitars, different types of string instrument arrangements and those pulsing, programmed polyrhythms for which you’ll likely need to direct your thoughts to the US to find a comparison. One of the songs that smells the most like a hit is “Loveshift”. It is a strong, driving song that hints of, and harks back to, Philly-soul, and one that Walz hadn’t even planned on having in the album! “In that case I actually listened to the people around me”, he says. “But generally it’s dangerous to listen too much to others. Two people whose opinions you respect can have diametrically opposite opinions themselves, if you listen too much to others it can make you feel incredibly split. I make my albums without a thought about format and target groups; other people can have opinions about which songs should become singles.” Some of the songs have even had trial lyrics that are later transformed into the final ones. “… [I]t’s important that a text feels natural to sing. A line of text that feels wrong can sink a whole song for me. The goal is to write lyrics that sound like the trial lyrics, are about something important, and feel totally right to sing." He quiets, then fires off a lightning smile, “And they wonder why it takes time!”