The German iTunes version of ‘Out Of My Hands’ includes a bonus track called ‘Undecided’. Although it is not commercially available outside Germany, you can listen to it here.
The response to the song has been overwhelmingly positive, with many fans hoping for an international release, and a fan organized petition has even been started up to support this request.
The songwriting team behind ‘Undecided’ is Snowdrop – Hågen Rørmark, Christian Engebretsen and Tor Einar Krogtoft-Jensen. You may remember Christian and Tor Einar from the band Girl Happy, who opened for a-ha at Frognerparken in August 2005; Tor Einar has also worked for Magne for over ten years, and has stood in for Paul during a couple of a-ha’s television appearances. Hågen has been a close friend of Paul’s ever since they met in New York in 1999, and has also played with Savoy on occasion. Since they all happen to write songs, Tor Einar says, “we decided to merge our talents to make great music! ;)”
The guys from Snowdrop were kind enough to answer a few questions about ‘Undecided’ and their other projects:
Q: You’ve written a song, ‘Undecided’, for Morten’s album, how did that come about?
A: We had just formed Snowdrop, as a writing/production team, and knew that Morten’s management was looking for songs, so we submitted a few of our first efforts and ‘Undecided’ was chosen.
Q: Are you pleased with the response to the song so far?
A: We’re thrilled with the response, and especially the response from the a-ha fans as we know that they have a discerning taste in music.
Q: What other projects are you working on now?
A: We are currently working on developing our catalogue of songs, we’ve been talking to a couple of different publishing companies and expect to finalize a deal soon, but we’re still looking for representation. We’ve also been approached for a few different projects here in Norway, amongst others one related to the Norwegian Idol.
Q: You’ve said you enjoy songwriting and have a lot of material, do you have any upcoming releases we can look forward to?
A: All three of us have a huge back-catalogue of songs and we’re constantly writing new ones, together and individually. Hågen is just finishing his first record all in Norwegian, which Tor Einar is playing drums on and co-producing. It is due for release in the autumn this year.
Q: What is your biggest challenge when writing a song?
A: Songwriting is not a challenge for us at all, it’s always fun and easy. The only challenge we might come across is that we have too many ideas and a lot of the times have to “kill” some of our “darlings” to get the song finished… 😉
Q: Who would you most like to collaborate with?
A: We want to write with any and all of the great singers/performers/artists in the world, we love music and we love what we do, and the fact that we can inspire these great artists to emote and interpret our songs is a gift to us, and of course working with the likes of Morten is a dream come true, as we’re all such big fans of his.
Q: Where did the name ‘snowdrop’ come from?
A: Snowdrop is the English name for the first flower that pokes its head up through the snow at springtime here in Norway. It’s beautiful and small and white. It represents innocence and new beginnings. It was Tor Einar’s idea, and all three of us felt it was perfect and appropriate for what we’re trying to do. Namely, poke our heads up through the dark and cold snow towards the sun and the warmth of music.