Laleh (singer)

Laleh
Laleh performing in 2010 at Landskrona
Background information
Birth name	Laleh Pourkarim
Born	(1982-06-10) June 10, 1982 Bandar-e Anzali, Gilan, Iran
Origin	Gothenburg, Västergötland, Sweden
Genres	Pop, pop rock, folk, indie
Occupation(s)	Singer-songwriter, guitarist, pianist, actress
Instrument(s)	Vocals, guitar, piano, keyboards, drums
Years active	2000-2006 (actress) 2005–present (singer)
Labels	Lost Army / Warner Music Sweden
Website	laleh.se

Laleh Pourkarim (Persian: لاله پورکریم, born June 10, 1982) is an Iranian born Swedish singer-songwriter and former actress. She uses her given name Laleh as her stage name. Following a short acting career, she entered the music industry in 2005 with her self-titled debut album which peaked at number one in Sweden and went on to become the highest selling album of the year. She has since released three further albums, all of which have been produced, written, recorded, engineered and performed by herself. She has sung in both English and Swedish, in addition to her parents native tounge, Persian. In 2011, she participated in the Swedish television show Så mycket bättre, which sees a number of artists create new interpretations of the others songs. Her performances on the show were lauded by both critics and the public. Following the show, it was noted in the media that she had been given "a second breakthrough".

Her latest album, Sjung, was released across Scandanavia on 25 January 2012.

Background and personal life

Laleh was originally born in the Northern Iranian harbour town of Bandar-e Anzali but fled the country a year later with her parents to live in Azerbaijan, Minsk and later in a refugee camp in Tidaholm. She moved to Sweden when she was twelve, and in her teenage years came to Gothenburg to attended school in the multicultural district of Angered. At Hvitfeldtska High School she studied the music program and grew up with classical music, ballet and circus music. She later got interested in punk, reggae and jazz music. She also learned to play the guitar and formed a jazz ensemble, Bejola, with her music teacher when she was a teenager, and went on to teach herself to play percussion and saxophone.

She is the daughter of Houshang Pourkarim who drowned in August 1994. A well-known opponent to the Islamic regime in Tehran, he was an artist, journalist and prominent Iranian ethnologist and rural sociologist from Bandar-e Anzali. During her appearance on Så mycket bättre she discussed her tough childhood moving from country to country and how she witnessed her father drowning in 1994 when he rescued a woman in distress whose canoe fell into the water while at a summer camp organising an Iranian union. As Houshang paddled out to help her, the canoe overturned with the woman surviving but Laleh's father drowning. She also mentioned why she choose to become a vegetarian. Laleh's mother, Atef, was a refugee from Georgia and Azerbaijan before she came to Iran to study comparative literature at the University of Tehran. Once the family arrived in Sweden, Atef taught Laleh Swedish in reportedly only eleven days.

Beginning her career in acting, she had a major role in the Swedish movie Jalla! Jalla!, directed by Josef Fares, which was a big success at the Swedish box office in 2000. Laleh moved to Stockholm in 2010 following a short stint in Skellefteå.

Music career

Early career

Laleh founded her own production and publishing company 'Lost Army' and signed a recording and distribution contract with Warner Music Sweden before recording her first studio album. The sound of her early songs have been compared to adult contemporary artists such as Sting and Seal. She wrote, performed, and produced her self-titled debut, which was released in the spring of 2005 and saw a percentage of the proceeds go to charity. It became the highest selling album of the year and reached number one on the Swedish chart. The first single from the album was "Invisible (My Song)", which peaked at number seven in Sweden in February 2012. Follow-up "Storebror" failed to chart, but next single, "Live Tomorrow" had even greater success than "Invisible" and ended up at the top of Sveriges Radio P3's radio show "Tracks" (Trackslistan) for several weeks. It peaked at number twenty on the Sverigetopplistan and also charted in Denmark. During 2005 she won numerous awards, including at the Swedish Grammis, where she received seven nominations and picked up three wins, including Artist of the Year, Producer of the Year, and New Artist of the Year. She was also nominated four times at the 2006 P3 Guld Awards and won Newcomer of the Year and Best Female Artist.

In 2006, Prinsessor ("Princesses") was released and peaked at number three on the Swedish album chart. After taking a break, Laleh returned to release her third studio album in 2009, Me and Simon. It contained a more folk pop sound than previous rock or soul-tinged tracks which has been attributed to the surroundings of moving from a big city to the northern Swedish town of Skellefteå in 2006. One of the nature reserves in the town was her inspiration for "Bjurö klubb".

Laleh has toured in several Scandinavian countries, Britain and Germany but has previously hinted that she is hesitant to launch overseas, saying she wants to be more prepared and develop fully as an artist. She has become known for her reluctance to give interviews and has been noted for her unconventional way of handling the press by attempting to keep her private life out of the media.

Så mycket bättre and Sjung

In 2011 she took part in the second season of Swedish reality TV show Så mycket bättre (So much better) on TV4. The show is for well-known Swedish musicians to create new interpretations of the other artists songs. She participated with Timbuktu, Eva Dahlgren, Lena Philipsson, E-Type, Tomas Ledin and Mikael Wiehe. She soon emerged as the favourite with her cover versions regularly topping the Swedish iTunes download charts and the official Sverigetopplistan downloads chart following the release of the weekly compilations of the week's covers from the show. Laleh's cover of Eva Dahlgren "Ängeln I Rummet" (Angel in the Room) reached number six on the official Swedish Singles Chart whilst topping the downloads chart in December 2011 to become her most successful song in Sweden to date in terms of both sales and peak chart position. This made the highest charting single of her career in Sweden. Similarly her renditions of Tomas Ledin's "Just Nu" (Right Now) and Timbuktu's "Alla vill till himmelen men ingen vill dö" (Everyone wants to go to heaven but no one wants to die) peaked at number 25, whilst "Here I Go Again" peaked at number one on the downloads chart. During the showings of Så mycket bättre, Laleh broke a Swedish digital chart record^[a] by having ten songs on the top sixty list, including nine inside the top 40, as a number of older songs also returned to the chart, with the first placement of "Bjurö klubb". Additionally two interpretations of her songs from the show by other artists appeared, to bring a total of twelve songs she had involvement with in the chart at once. Tolkningarna (Interpretations), an extended play of all of the songs she performed on the show will be released on the 25 December 2011.

Her fourth studio album was originally due to be released in December 2011 to coincide with her appearance on Så mycket bättre, but it was postponed due to scheduling difficulties with the show. The name, artwork, release date and track listing of the album was later announced in December. The album is entitled Sjung (Sing) and consists of eight English language songs and three in Swedish, with the English songs leading of the album in a similar vein to Me and Simon. It was released on 25 January 2012 across Scandanavia to positive reviews, with "Some Die Young" serving as the lead single, released three days earlier. A tour to promote the album was announced at the end of November 2011, with fifteen dates across Sweden beginning in March and concluding in April 2012.

Discography

Main article: Laleh discography

Studio albums

• 2005: Laleh
• 2006: Prinsessor
• 2009: Me and Simon
• 2012: Sjung

Extended plays

• 2011: Tolkningarna

Awards and nominations

Year	Ceremony	Category	Title	Result
2005	Rockbjörnen Awards	Swedish Song of the Year	"Live Tomorrow"	Nominated
		Swedish Album of the Year	"Laleh"	Nominated
	Grammis Awards	Album of the Year	"Laleh"	Nominated
		Artist of the Year	Laleh Pourkarim	Won
		New Artist of the Year		Won
		Composer of the Year		Nominated
		Producer of the Year		Won
		Lyricist of the Year		Nominated
		Ballad of the Year	"Live Tomorrow"	Nominated
2006	P3 Guld Awards	Newcomer of the Year	Laleh Pourkarim	Won
		Gold Fox Award (Best Live Act)		Nominated
		Year's Female Artist	"Laleh"	Won
		Year's Best Single	"Live Tomorrow"	Nominated

See also

• List of famous Persian women
• List of Swedes in music
• List of Warner Music Group artists

Notes

• ¹ This refers to the Swedish DigiListan chart which counts music sold and distributed online only. The record on the Sverigetopplistan belongs to songs from Satan i gatan by Veronica Maggio which managed eleven simultaneously charting songs in the top thirty six months earlier.

External links

• Official website