For so long Stina Nordenstam appeared to be running away.
Like escape itself became the destination.
Her music was homeless because that�s what she wanted it to be.
Albums were recorded in Los Angeles; musicians were flown in from all over The world, silly amounts were spent on photo sessions in New York.
Until the only constant was her voice.

This time, she decided to come home.
This time, she knows things she didn�t know before.
This time, she has decided where home actually is.
This is why "The world is saved" was conceived and recorded in Stockholm, Sweden, employing Swedish musicians, some of the country�s most intense and innovative musicians, including trumpeter Goran Kajf�s and bass player - and visionary behind the acclaimed H�pna label � Johan Berhling.

Anyone who has followed Stina's music over the 13 years since her debut album, "Memories of a color", knows this doesn�t mean she has come to a standstill.
This is not goodbye.
There never was one, hopefully never will be.
Every album, every song, she has ever recorded has been written out of necessity, each album born from a reaction against the previous one.
Few artists, if any, are as brutally honest as Stina. Every wound is in there somewhere, all the scars there for everyone to see. On "The world is saved", Stina's first album on her own label, A walk in the park (the name of a song title from her 1991 debut) the healing is in its full bloom.

As the title suggests, this is some of the most hopeful music Stina Nordenstam has ever recorded.

Still, she has always felt a strong sense of belonging with - what she calls
- the misfits.
- "The junkies, the homeless, the addicts and the mentally ill. The human beings society never knows how to deal with and therefore treat as aliens. They are the people that I can relate to, whom I feel empathy with. To me, each one of them is worth ten times more than any Vice President". Two songs on the album ("I�m staring at the world" and "The morning belongs to the night") started out as part of a Swedish TV documentary by Adam Nilsson called "Jean-Claude" about a Parisian who once was both a florist and a celebrated model but lived most of his life on the streets. The Jean-Claudes of this world will forever play an important part in the music, art and life of Stina Nordenstam.

Listening to her music, reading her lyrics, we should be thankful that someone, in times as empty, shallow and superficial as ours, dares to be this complicated, this human.
And still without forgetting the importance of beauty. Melodies as precious as Stina's are a rare thing. Treasure them, hold them like your children�s' lives depended on it.
If you listen to them carefully you don�t have to sleep, we can just sit here and together and watch the sun come up.

by Andres Lokko
Stockholm, July 2004