The Swedish disco duo Sally Shapiro have just announced that they will be breaking up and that their next single will be their final release.
Sally Shapiro, the synthpop/disco duo from Sweden has just announced that they will be releasing their final single, “If You Ever Wanna Change Your Mind.” That is correct, this will be the final project from Johan Agebjörn and his unknown companion. The duo made a statement about their break up to their fans.
“This is it. Thanks for everything. We did the best we could. Everything came from the heart. Everything was in stereo.”
In a press release the group went into further detail explaining that they suffered from creative differences, stating that Agebjörn was more into “90s-style electronica” and Shapiro was into “non-electronica pop.” They mentioned how they were only able to produce two songs in three years and came to the realization that it was ending. They finished by thanking their fans and the overall message of the statement seemed to be a peaceful split between the two artist.
As reported by Pitchfork, the new single is set to drop on May 12 on Fika and was co-written by Roger Gunnarsson and co-produced by Mitch Murder. The lead track will be included on a forthcoming Sally Shapiro compilation via Paper Bag. The song can be streamed below.
The ever mysterious and secretive duo has enjoyed a lot of success since their debut maxi-single “I’ll Be By Your Side” back in 2006. Most believe this success is due to their seemingly absent nature to the spot light, which stemming from their lead singer’s choice to go by the band’s name and not to ever release her real name. The band has yet to go on a full length tour but attempted one back in 2008. Agebjörn made a statement on their Myspace page back in 2009 about the tour.
Sally felt that standing on stage was not her thing, and that life on tour in general didn’t interest her. It was not just about shyness, it was as much about a disinterest in endless travelling and working hours in the middle of the night. Some of the live/DJ requests turned into Johan solo DJ gigs, most didn’t happen at all. Many people in the music industry think it’s commercially stupid, we lose a lot of opportunities to gain listeners and sell records. And we guess they are right. We also have the feeling of making our listeners (the ones that we met were really nice) disappointed. But we believe that you shouldn’t take opportunities just because they exist, if it’s not what you really want to do. What if you just want to be a normal person with a normal job, record songs on the weekends, and spend the holidays picking blueberries instead of going on tour.
These choices are certainly out of the ordinary and seem to take a page out of Pearl Jam’s book, who refused interviews and any music videos during the peak of their fame. But, oddly enough, this absence has seemingly worked in the duo’s favor, much like it did for Pearl Jam so many years ago. The presumed reasoning behind the success of the duo can be debated but the talent that they posses is something that cannot.