Agnes Obel
Encyclopedia
Agnes Caroline Thaarup Obel (born 28 October 1980) is a Danish singer/songwriter. Her first album, Philharmonics
Philharmonics (album)
-Deluxe Edition:- Charts :- Year-end charts :- Certifications :- Release history :...

, was released by PIAS Recordings
PIAS Recordings
[PIAS] Recordings is the recorded music division of the [PIAS] Entertainment Group, a European independent artist and label services company.The record labels that operate under the [PIAS] Recordings umbrella are: Play It Again Sam, Wall of Sound and Different Recordings.Aside from the three London...

 on 4 October 2010 in Denmark, Norway, Germany and other European countries. Since June 2011, Philharmonics
Philharmonics (album)
-Deluxe Edition:- Charts :- Year-end charts :- Certifications :- Release history :...

is certified gold by the Belgian Entertainment Association
Belgian Entertainment Association
The Belgian Entertainment Association is the organization that represents the interests of the music, video and video game industries in Belgium...

 (BEA) for sales of 10,000 units. In November 2011, Agnes Obel wins at the Danish Music Awards
Danish Music Awards
The Danish Music Awards is a Danish award show. The show has been arranged by IFPI since 1989, and was originally called IFPI-prisen until 1991, when it changed its name to Dansk Grammy . The current name was given in 2001, after the American Grammy Awards took copyright on the name Grammy....

 five prizes for : Best Album Of The Year, Best Pop Release Of The Year, Best Debut Artist Of The Year, Best Female Artist Of The Year and Best Songwriter Of The Year.

Early life

Agnes Caroline Thaarup Obel was born on 28 October 1980 in Gentofte
Gentofte
Gentofte Kommune is a municipality in the Capital Region of Denmark on the east coast of the island of Zealand in eastern Denmark. The municipality covers an area of , and has a total population of 68,913...

 (north of Copenhagen
Copenhagen
Copenhagen is the capital and largest city of Denmark, with an urban population of 1,199,224 and a metropolitan population of 1,930,260 . With the completion of the transnational Øresund Bridge in 2000, Copenhagen has become the centre of the increasingly integrating Øresund Region...

). Born into a musical family, Agnes Obel learned piano at a very young age. Her mother played Bartók and Chopin on the piano. During her childhood, Agnes Obel found inspiration in Jan Johansson's work. Johansson's songs, European folk tunes done in a jazzy style, have influenced the young musician a lot.

In 1987, Obel joined a small band as a singer and bass guitar player. The group appeared in a festival and even recorded some titles.

In 1994, Agnes Obel had a little part in the short film : The Boy Who Walked Backwards / Drengen der gik baglæns by Thomas Vinterberg
Thomas Vinterberg
Thomas Vinterberg is a Danish film director who, along with Lars von Trier, co-founded the Dogme 95 movement in filmmaking, which established rules for simplifying movie production....

. Her brother, Holger Thaarup, played the main character in the movie.

She attended high school at Det frie Gymnasium but stopped her studies quickly. "At seventeen,(...) I met a man who was running a studio. I gave up quickly my musical studies to learn the sounds's techniques." Later, and with the help of Danish musician and producer Elton Theander, Obel founded the Copenhagen based band Sohio. But work in a rock band appeared to expose the dangers of an "encumbered" music. During a visit in Berlin, the artist sees the city as an ideal ground for musical creation. Far from Copenhagen
Copenhagen
Copenhagen is the capital and largest city of Denmark, with an urban population of 1,199,224 and a metropolitan population of 1,930,260 . With the completion of the transnational Øresund Bridge in 2000, Copenhagen has become the centre of the increasingly integrating Øresund Region...

 who had become "a too small city, too choking." Since 2005, Obel lives in Berlin.

In 2009, Obel put a demo
Demo (music)
A demo version or demo of a song is one recorded for reference rather than for release. A demo is a way for a musician to approximate their ideas on tape or disc, and provide an example of those ideas to record labels, producers or other artists...

 of "Just So" on Myspace
Myspace
Myspace is a social networking service owned by Specific Media LLC and pop star Justin Timberlake. Myspace launched in August 2003 and is headquartered in Beverly Hills, California. In August 2011, Myspace had 33.1 million unique U.S. visitors....

. The telecommunications company Deutsche Telekom
Deutsche Telekom
Deutsche Telekom AG is a telecommunications company headquartered in Bonn, Germany. It is the largest telecommunications company in Europe....

 used "Just So" in an advertisement and, after this great opportunity, Obel encountered less difficulty in finding a label for her first album.

Influences

Agnes Obel is influenced by artists such as Roy Orbison
Roy Orbison
Roy Kelton Orbison was an American singer-songwriter, well known for his distinctive, powerful voice, complex compositions, and dark emotional ballads. Orbison grew up in Texas and began singing in a rockabilly/country & western band in high school until he was signed by Sun Records in Memphis...

, Joni Mitchell
Joni Mitchell
Joni Mitchell, CC is a Canadian musician, singer songwriter, and painter. Mitchell began singing in small nightclubs in her native Saskatchewan and Western Canada and then busking in the streets and dives of Toronto...

 and PJ Harvey
PJ Harvey
Polly Jean Harvey is an English musician, singer-songwriter, composer and occasional artist. Primarily known as a vocalist and guitarist, she is also proficient with a wide range of instruments including piano, organ, bass, saxophone, and most recently, the autoharp.Harvey began her career in...

, and also by the French composers Claude Debussy
Claude Debussy
Claude-Achille Debussy was a French composer. Along with Maurice Ravel, he was one of the most prominent figures working within the field of impressionist music, though he himself intensely disliked the term when applied to his compositions...

, Maurice Ravel
Maurice Ravel
Joseph-Maurice Ravel was a French composer known especially for his melodies, orchestral and instrumental textures and effects...

 and Eric Satie.

She also likes Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe was an American author, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective...

 and photographers Sybille Bergemann, Robert Mapplethorpe
Robert Mapplethorpe
Robert Mapplethorpe was an American photographer, known for his large-scale, highly stylized black and white portraits, photos of flowers and nude men...

, Tina Modotti
Tina Modotti
Tina Modotti was an Italian photographer, model, actress, and revolutionary political activist.- Early life :Modotti was born Assunta Adelaide Luigia Modotti Mondini in Udine, Friuli, Italy...

 and Alfred Hitchcock
Alfred Hitchcock
Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, KBE was a British film director and producer. He pioneered many techniques in the suspense and psychological thriller genres. After a successful career in British cinema in both silent films and early talkies, Hitchcock moved to Hollywood...

. Concerning Hitchcock, she says, "I adore his enigmatic style, his sophisticated esthetic but always with an extreme simplicity." The cover of her first album, photographed by berliner photographer Mali Lazell, is an 'hommage' to The Birds (film)
The Birds (film)
The Birds is a 1963 horror film directed by Alfred Hitchcock based on the 1952 short story "The Birds" by Daphne du Maurier. It depicts Bodega Bay, California which is, suddenly and for unexplained reasons, the subject of a series of widespread and violent bird attacks over the course of a few...

.

Philharmonics

Obel debuted as a solo singer with her first album Philharmonics
Philharmonics (album)
-Deluxe Edition:- Charts :- Year-end charts :- Certifications :- Release history :...

(2010).

She writes, plays, sings, records and produces all her material herself. "The orchestral or symphonic music never interested me. I always was attracted by simple melodies, almost childish.(…) I put a long time before writing texts because the music seems to tell already a story, to project images." Her piano is really much more than an instrument : "The piano and the singing are two equal things to me – maybe not inseparable but very connected. You can say they are like two equal voices." For her : "The music is the most obvious means to express what I am, where I am." "I don't have the feeling of being motivated by anger, revenge or frustration. I do exactly what I always wanted to do. In fact, I don't have the feeling to have chosen music. The music chose me." About her inspiration : "I don't go out and seek inspiration, I think I get my inspiration from the melody. Sometimes I feel like a melody doesn't have anything to do with me, but it's just something that comes, is accumulated from me playing on the piano, and then this little creature just appears."

For the promotion of Philharmonics, Agnes Obel appears (under the lenses of Mali Lazell) beside an impressive and worrying owl. This is clearly a reference to Alfred Hitchcock
Alfred Hitchcock
Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, KBE was a British film director and producer. He pioneered many techniques in the suspense and psychological thriller genres. After a successful career in British cinema in both silent films and early talkies, Hitchcock moved to Hollywood...

's classic The Birds (film)
The Birds (film)
The Birds is a 1963 horror film directed by Alfred Hitchcock based on the 1952 short story "The Birds" by Daphne du Maurier. It depicts Bodega Bay, California which is, suddenly and for unexplained reasons, the subject of a series of widespread and violent bird attacks over the course of a few...

. However there is no owl in Hitchcock's film and many people find more connection with Ingmar Bergman
Ingmar Bergman
Ernst Ingmar Bergman was a Swedish director, writer and producer for film, stage and television. Described by Woody Allen as "probably the greatest film artist, all things considered, since the invention of the motion picture camera", he is recognized as one of the most accomplished and...

 universe. "Agnes, really superb, looks like Liv Ullmann
Liv Ullmann
Liv Johanne Ullmann is a Norwegian actress and film director, as well as one of the "muses" of the Swedish director Ingmar Bergman...

 in Ingmar Bergman's Persona (film)
Persona (film)
Persona is a film by Swedish director Ingmar Bergman, released in 1966, and starring Bibi Andersson and Liv Ullmann. Bergman held this film to be one of his most important; in his book Images, he writes: "Today I feel that in Persona—and later in Cries and Whispers—I had gone as far as I could go...

or Tippi Hedren
Tippi Hedren
Nathalie Kay "Tippi" Hedren is an American actress and former fashion model with a career spanning six decades. She is primarily known for her roles in two Alfred Hitchcock films, The Birds and Marnie, and her extensive efforts in animal rescue at Shambala Preserve, an wildlife habitat which she...

 disguised in a proud Marnie (film)
Marnie (film)
Marnie is a 1964 psychological thriller directed by Alfred Hitchcock and based on the novel of the same name by Winston Graham. The film stars Tippi Hedren and Sean Connery. The original film score was composed by Bernard Herrmann.-Plot:...

rather than to its catatonic character of The Birds (film)
The Birds (film)
The Birds is a 1963 horror film directed by Alfred Hitchcock based on the 1952 short story "The Birds" by Daphne du Maurier. It depicts Bodega Bay, California which is, suddenly and for unexplained reasons, the subject of a series of widespread and violent bird attacks over the course of a few...

".

Philharmonics has garnered generally positive review with for example James Skinner from BBC saying that "the compositions... are slow, sombre, sepulchral even, but not without a sense of occasionally singular beauty". In the French cultural magazine Les Inrockuptibles, Johanna Seban speaks about a "disarming purity" and states: "There is, in these deeply melancholic ballads, the clearness and reassuring nobility of bedside discs." At last, in Musicomh, Ben Edgell writes: "Obel sings with a hushed and tender grace that waxes wistful and serene over yearning cello, harp, and piano vignettes. She's a fey siren, with a dusky, near-whispered vocal that speaks to Ane Brun
Ane Brun
Ane Brun is a songwriter, guitarist and vocalist. Since 2003 she has recorded eight albums, four of which are studio albums, a live DVD and a collection of duets...

 or Eva Cassidy
Eva Cassidy
Eva Marie Cassidy was an American vocalist known for her interpretations of jazz, blues, folk, gospel, country and pop classics. In 1992 she released her first album, The Other Side, a set of duets with go-go musician Chuck Brown, followed by a live solo album, Live at Blues Alley in 1996...

." French journalists have called Obel : "A revelation to follow".

Philharmonics has become a critical and commercial success. In March 2011, Obel has appeared for the first time in United States. At the South by Southwest (SXSW) music festival in Austin, Agnes Obel has performed all the titles of her album. In October 2011, Agnes Obel has signed with Wintrup Musik for a more important diffusion of Philharmonics
Philharmonics (album)
-Deluxe Edition:- Charts :- Year-end charts :- Certifications :- Release history :...

. Wintrup is an independent publisher with its own radio & TV promotion department and the worldwide network of a "major".

"Just So" was featured in a Deutsche Telekom
Deutsche Telekom
Deutsche Telekom AG is a telecommunications company headquartered in Bonn, Germany. It is the largest telecommunications company in Europe....

 commercial in Germany.
Three songs from the album were on the soundtrack of the 2009 film
Submarino
Submarino
Submarino is a 2010 Danish drama film directed by Thomas Vinterberg, starring Jakob Cedergren and Peter Plaugborg. It is based on the 2007 novel Submarino by Jonas T. Bengtsson, and focuses on two brothers on the bottom of Danish society, with lives marked by violence and drug addiction. The film...

. "Riverside" was featured in the episode "Not Responsible" of Grey's Anatomy
Grey's Anatomy
Grey's Anatomy is an American medical drama television series created by Shonda Rhimes. The series premiered on March 27, 2005 on ABC; since then, seven seasons have aired. The series follows the lives of interns, residents and their mentors in the fictional Seattle Grace Mercy West Hospital in...

and in Episode 12 of the second season of Offspring
Offspring
In biology, offspring is the product of reproduction, of a new organism produced by one or more parents.Collective offspring may be known as a brood or progeny in a more general way...

. "Avenue" was played in the episode "Trust" from
Revenge
Revenge (TV series)
Revenge is an American television drama inspired by the Alexandre Dumas novel The Count of Monte Cristo starring Madeleine Stowe and Emily VanCamp. It debuted on ABC on September 21, 2011, and currently airs on Wednesday nights at 10:00 pm Eastern/9:00 pm Central...

. "Riverside" was played in the episode "Duplicity" from
Revenge
Revenge (TV series)
Revenge is an American television drama inspired by the Alexandre Dumas novel The Count of Monte Cristo starring Madeleine Stowe and Emily VanCamp. It debuted on ABC on September 21, 2011, and currently airs on Wednesday nights at 10:00 pm Eastern/9:00 pm Central...

. In April 2011, the Danish group Lulu Rouge have released a remix version of Agnes Obel's Riverside. Keeping the tracks original beauty, Lulu Rouge have added their special electronic tempo on this famous song.

Covers

All of the songs in
Philharmonics are original work except : "Close Watch" (I keep a Close Watch by John Cale
John Cale
John Davies Cale, OBE is a Welsh musician, composer, singer-songwriter and record producer who was a founding member of the experimental rock band The Velvet Underground....

) & "Katie Cruel
Katie Cruel
Katie Cruel is a traditional American folksong, likely of Scottish origin. As a traditional song, it has been recorded by many performers, but the best known recording of the song is by Karen Dalton on the album In My Own Time...

" (a folk traditional; as the iTunes bonus track of the album). In 'Live à Paris', released in 11 April 2011 on iTunes
ITunes
iTunes is a media player computer program, used for playing, downloading, and organizing digital music and video files on desktop computers. It can also manage contents on iPod, iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad....

, : Agnes Obel sings a cover of Elliot Smith's "Between The Bars".

Philharmonics – Deluxe Version

PIAS Recordings
PIAS Recordings
[PIAS] Recordings is the recorded music division of the [PIAS] Entertainment Group, a European independent artist and label services company.The record labels that operate under the [PIAS] Recordings umbrella are: Play It Again Sam, Wall of Sound and Different Recordings.Aside from the three London...

 has released, on 7 February 2011, a 'Deluxe Version' of
Philharmonics
Philharmonics (album)
-Deluxe Edition:- Charts :- Year-end charts :- Certifications :- Release history :...

. This Deluxe Version contains five more tracks. Two instrumentals (Riverside and Just So) and three live versions : Over the Hill, Just So and a new song : Smoke & Mirrors.

Awards

Since June 2011,
Philharmonics
Philharmonics (album)
-Deluxe Edition:- Charts :- Year-end charts :- Certifications :- Release history :...

is certified gold by the Belgian Entertainment Association
Belgian Entertainment Association
The Belgian Entertainment Association is the organization that represents the interests of the music, video and video game industries in Belgium...

 (BEA) for sales of 10,000 units. In February 2011, Obel's first album has been nominated for 'Impala European Independent Album of the Year' and the title
Riverside (from the Submarino
Submarino
Submarino is a 2010 Danish drama film directed by Thomas Vinterberg, starring Jakob Cedergren and Peter Plaugborg. It is based on the 2007 novel Submarino by Jonas T. Bengtsson, and focuses on two brothers on the bottom of Danish society, with lives marked by violence and drug addiction. The film...

s soundtrack) won the Robert Award
Robert Award
The Robert statue is a Danish film prize awarded each year by the Film Academy of Denmark. It is the Danish equivalent of the American Oscars. The award, voted only by academy members, is acknowledgement by Danish industry colleagues of a person's or film's outstanding contributions during the...

 for the Best Song of the year 2011.

In October 2011, Agnes Obel wins the 2012 European Border Breakers Awards. The prize celebrate the top new talents in European pop music who "have all succeeded in reaching out to audiences beyond their home country through their talent and energy."

In November 2011, Agnes Obel triumphs at the Danish Music Awards
Danish Music Awards
The Danish Music Awards is a Danish award show. The show has been arranged by IFPI since 1989, and was originally called IFPI-prisen until 1991, when it changed its name to Dansk Grammy . The current name was given in 2001, after the American Grammy Awards took copyright on the name Grammy....

 with five prizes for her first album Philharmonics
Philharmonics (album)
-Deluxe Edition:- Charts :- Year-end charts :- Certifications :- Release history :...

. The artist wins for the Best Album Of The Year, Best Pop Release Of The Year, Best Debut Artist Of The Year, Best Female Artist Of The Year and Best Songwriter Of The Year.

New Album

The composer is currently working on a new album. In an interview, Obel explains : "There will be new melodies that do not take origin on my life in Berlin or when I was a teenager. I will begin recording this summer when I can take a break from my tour." About her new album : "I started to write new pieces, but all were instrumental ones, with the piano alone… In this moment, I feel more inclined to compose instrumental pieces. I already started to write some texts, but for me, it's more difficult to compose melodies."

Studio albums

List of albums, with selected chart positions and certifications
Title Album details Peak chart positions Certifications
DEN
BEL
Ultratop
Ultratop is an organization which generates and publishes the official record charts in Belgium, and it is also the name of most of those charts...


FRA
Syndicat National de l'Edition Phonographique
The Syndicat national de l'édition phonographique is the inter-professional organization which protects the interests of the French record industry...


NLD
MegaCharts
MegaCharts is responsible for the composition and exploitation of a broad collection of official charts in the Netherlands, of which the Mega Top 50 and the Mega Album Top 100 are the most known ones. Mega Charts also provides information to the Stichting Nederlandse Top 40, of which the Dutch Top...


SWI
Swiss Music Charts
The Swiss Music Charts are Switzerland's main music sales charts. The charts are a record of the highest-selling singles and albums in various genres in Switzerland.The Swiss Charts include:* Singles Top 75...


Philharmonics
Philharmonics (album)
-Deluxe Edition:- Charts :- Year-end charts :- Certifications :- Release history :...

  • Released: 4 October 2010
  • Label: PIAS
    PIAS Recordings
    [PIAS] Recordings is the recorded music division of the [PIAS] Entertainment Group, a European independent artist and label services company.The record labels that operate under the [PIAS] Recordings umbrella are: Play It Again Sam, Wall of Sound and Different Recordings.Aside from the three London...

  • Formats: LP
    LP record
    The LP, or long-playing microgroove record, is a format for phonograph records, an analog sound storage medium. Introduced by Columbia Records in 1948, it was soon adopted as a new standard by the entire record industry...

    , CD, digital download
    Music download
    A music download is the transferral of music from an Internet-facing computer or website to a user's local computer. This term encompasses both legal downloads and downloads of copyright material without permission or payment...

1 1 8 9 58
  • DEN: 3× Platinum
  • BEL
    Belgian Entertainment Association
    The Belgian Entertainment Association is the organization that represents the interests of the music, video and video game industries in Belgium...

    : Gold
  • FRA
    Syndicat National de l'Edition Phonographique
    The Syndicat national de l'édition phonographique is the inter-professional organization which protects the interests of the French record industry...

    : Platinum
  • "—" denotes releases that did not chart.

    Extended plays

    List of albums, with selected chart positions
    Title Album details Peak chart positions
    DEN
    BEL
    Ultratop
    Ultratop is an organization which generates and publishes the official record charts in Belgium, and it is also the name of most of those charts...


    FRA
    Syndicat National de l'Edition Phonographique
    The Syndicat national de l'édition phonographique is the inter-professional organization which protects the interests of the French record industry...


    NLD
    MegaCharts
    MegaCharts is responsible for the composition and exploitation of a broad collection of official charts in the Netherlands, of which the Mega Top 50 and the Mega Album Top 100 are the most known ones. Mega Charts also provides information to the Stichting Nederlandse Top 40, of which the Dutch Top...


    SWI
    Swiss Music Charts
    The Swiss Music Charts are Switzerland's main music sales charts. The charts are a record of the highest-selling singles and albums in various genres in Switzerland.The Swiss Charts include:* Singles Top 75...


    iTunes Live à Paris
    • Released: 11 April 2011
    • Label: PIAS
      PIAS Recordings
      [PIAS] Recordings is the recorded music division of the [PIAS] Entertainment Group, a European independent artist and label services company.The record labels that operate under the [PIAS] Recordings umbrella are: Play It Again Sam, Wall of Sound and Different Recordings.Aside from the three London...

    • Formats: Digital download
      Music download
      A music download is the transferral of music from an Internet-facing computer or website to a user's local computer. This term encompasses both legal downloads and downloads of copyright material without permission or payment...

    131
    "—" denotes releases that did not chart.

    Singles

    List of singles, with selected chart positions showing year released and album name
    Single Year Peak chart positions Certifications Album
    DEN
    BEL
    Ultratop
    Ultratop is an organization which generates and publishes the official record charts in Belgium, and it is also the name of most of those charts...


    FRA
    Syndicat National de l'Edition Phonographique
    The Syndicat national de l'édition phonographique is the inter-professional organization which protects the interests of the French record industry...


    NLD
    MegaCharts
    MegaCharts is responsible for the composition and exploitation of a broad collection of official charts in the Netherlands, of which the Mega Top 50 and the Mega Album Top 100 are the most known ones. Mega Charts also provides information to the Stichting Nederlandse Top 40, of which the Dutch Top...


    SWI
    Swiss Music Charts
    The Swiss Music Charts are Switzerland's main music sales charts. The charts are a record of the highest-selling singles and albums in various genres in Switzerland.The Swiss Charts include:* Singles Top 75...


    "Riverside" 2010 2 3 71 58
    • DEN: Platinum
    • BEL: Gold
    Philharmonics
    "Just So" 12 87
    "Brother Sparrow" 2011
    "—" denotes releases that did not chart.

    Other charted songs

    List of singles, with selected chart positions showing year released and album name
    Single Year Peak chart positions Album
    DEN
    BEL
    Ultratop
    Ultratop is an organization which generates and publishes the official record charts in Belgium, and it is also the name of most of those charts...


    FRA
    Syndicat National de l'Edition Phonographique
    The Syndicat national de l'édition phonographique is the inter-professional organization which protects the interests of the French record industry...


    NLD
    MegaCharts
    MegaCharts is responsible for the composition and exploitation of a broad collection of official charts in the Netherlands, of which the Mega Top 50 and the Mega Album Top 100 are the most known ones. Mega Charts also provides information to the Stichting Nederlandse Top 40, of which the Dutch Top...


    SWI
    Swiss Music Charts
    The Swiss Music Charts are Switzerland's main music sales charts. The charts are a record of the highest-selling singles and albums in various genres in Switzerland.The Swiss Charts include:* Singles Top 75...


    "On Powdered Ground" 2011 26 Philharmonics
    "—" denotes releases that did not chart.

    External links

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