Tove Stryke & the mystery of Swedish reggae

Is there such a thing as Swedish reggae? It had never really occurred to me before I read this article, in which Stephin Merrit of the Magnetic Fields identifies it as one of pop's most underrated microgenres (he had his own stab at Sweggae, as no-one calls it, on the track It's A Crime).

Once it had been brought to my attention, I couldn't escape it. Obviously, Ace Of Base constructed an entire career out of reggae's elastic rhythms and europop's plastic melodies. But there's also Robyn's Dancehall Queen and Abba's Sitting In The Palm Tree - which is the nadir of their career, but that's a discussion for another time.

Abba - Sitting In The Palm Tree

Laura Engberg represented Sweden with a Caribbean-flavoured Eurovision entry in 1987 (although it's a stretch to call it reggae) and the country even has a bona fide reggae star - Peps Persson, who Bob Marley called the only white man with reggae in his blood.

Peps Persson - Oh Boy!

I wonder if anyone can help me explain this? From the cursory research I've done, I can't see much reason for the cultural cross-pollination between Kingston and Stockholm. The island of St Bart's was briefly a Swedish colony in the 19th Century, but that's unlikely to be the source. Perhaps you could argue that the chukka-chukka rhythms of dub and reggae are a good partner for the oompah-oompah of Schlager, Sweden's prevalent form of folk music - but again the link is tenuous at best.

Whatever the reason, the advance of Sweggae (as still nobody is calling it) continues apace. The new single from pop sorcerer Tove Styrke is a bouncy, percussion-heavy track called Borderline, which leans heavily on its buoyant reggae chords to balance the strident, politically-loaded lyrics.

I called the song a "bubbling, scandipop gem" when it debuted in a "songs you may have missed" post a couple of weeks ago, and the recently-released video only makes it better.

Tove Styrke - Borderline

If you like that, check out Tove's barnstorming Even If I'm Loud It Doesn't Mean I'm Talking To You, which came out earlier this year, then get yourself down to her first ever UK show on 5 November.

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A post-Paris roundup

Good afternoon!

After a week walking around the various arrondisements of Paris, there are bones poking through the soles of my feet. So what better excuse to sit back and listen to all the music that's been unleashed on the internet over the last seven days? Grab a cuppa, crack open the chocolate digestives and gather round the screen for an audiovisual treat.

1) Russ Chimes - Turn Me Out
I love this. I love this a lot. Courtesy of internet enigma Russ Chimes (he doesn't even have a wikipedia page!) it's the latest entry in 2012's rapidly expanding catalogue of '90s house revival tunes. Chunky bass line? Check. Handclaps? Check. Wailing diva vocal hook? Check x3.

The story goes that Russ churned this song out as a filler for his DJ set, but it went down so well that DeConstruction asked him to put it out as a single. Good call. You can buy it from 29 April.





2) AlunaGeorge - Attracting Flies
In which Aluna stars in a series of fairytales, directed in the style of Shane Meadows. The three bears are particularly grisly. I hope she didn't eat their porridge.




3) Agnetha Fältskog - When You Really Loved Someone
It seems strange that the woman who once asked "without a song or a dance what are we?" would shun music for nine years, but Agnetha Fältskog has never been one to conform to expectations. As she told me in this interview, she was only coaxed back into the studio by megafan Jorgen Eloffson (Kelly Clarkson, Britney Spears), who'd written an entire album for her.

The comeback single - like the rest of the album - is more in the style of Eloffson's Westlife ballads than his Clarko megastonkers. When You Really Loved Someone is basically a Radio 2 crowdpleaser with a predictable key change. It's Faltskog's voice that sells it. Pure and clear, it's lost none of it's power over the years. She's still the A in Abba.




4) Lana Del Rey - Summertime Sadness (Ryan Hemsworth remix)
Fun fact: If you were to play all the remixes from Lana Del Rey's debut album back to back, the playlist would not finish until May 2047. This mix of Summertime Sadness, from Canadian beat machine Ryan Hemsworth, is one of the better ones, though. As sultry as they come.





5) Phoenix - Entertainment
This is one of the most cinematic music videos you'll ever see. Sumptuously shot, the Korean-set story is packed with romance and bloody violence. It must have cost an absolute fortune to make, and it's a must-see.




6) Justin Timberlake - Suit and Tie (Dillon Francis mix)
Take a boring song, cut it into tiny shreds, put it back together at random, add a donk or two for good measure and, hey presto, you've got a song they can play on Radio One with the rave klaxon on top. Job done.

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She's Aluna, I'm George and together we are...

Do I need to tell you how good AlunaGeorge are AGAIN? No. Good.

Just A Touch is the double A-side to their current Radio 1 playlisted song You Know You Like It. A slippery slice of Sputnik funk, I first featured it on the blog back in April - but the video has just been released, which is a perfect excuse to ram it down your throats a second time.

Both producer George Reid and singer Aluna Francis were born in 1988, so it's presumably just coincidence that they've lifted the video's visual signature from Swedish pop overlords Abba.

Abba


AlunaGeorge


Let's just hope they don't stumble across this photo and try to recreate it, too.



*Shudders*

AlunaGeorge - Just A Touch

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Sound Bank: 1) The Glissando

Is there more a thrilling way to start a song than this?

 

The answer, in case you're struggling, is NO. The first record I ever bought was Abba's Dancing Queen, the second was The Boomtown Rats' I Don't Like Mondays. Both of them start with a man (let's assume it's a man) running his finger from the very top of a piano keyboard to the very bottom. In essence, it's what any child would do when confronted with a piano. Place your hand at shoulder height, plonk your pudgy fingers on C7, run to the other end of the room making as loud a noise as possible, laugh so hard the blood drains from your head, repeat. That's why it sounds so joyous, and that's why it works perfectly at the start of a song.

DANGER: Do not start a piece of music with a glissando unless you are capable of matching that breath-taking swan dive down the octaves in the rest of the song.

Examples of tracks that achieve this include: The Jackson 5's I Want You Back.
Examples of songs that do not achieve this are: Anything that isn't The Jackson 5's I Want You Back.

Sound Bank is a series of blog posts I'm running in August while I'm on holiday. If you want to know more about it, there's an explanation on this page. Normal pop blog service will be resumed around 25th August

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Mamma Mia! spoofed by French and Saunders

As I'm neither female nor braindead, I was one of the few people who instinctivley hated Mamma Mia! The Movie.

I know, I know, I know - it was "tongue-in-cheek" and "camp" and "hilarious" and "heartwarming". But that's just another way of saying that they took one of pop's great songbooks, ripped it up, burnt it, pissed on the embers, fed them to a cow, removed the bile from its third stomach, poured it into a glass and served it up as a cocktail.

In other words, I do not approve of this film.

Anyway, French and Saunders obviously share some of my concerns, as they tore the movie to pieces in a parody for Comic Relief last Friday night. It's the best thing they've done for years...

Part One


Part Two

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I've seen this idea somewhere before

Is it just me, or is this:



..."inspired" by this:


...or even this:

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Gimme, Gimme, Gimme

For those of you saddened by today's news that Abba will never again don their spangly pants and seranade the masses, Fluxblog has some salve for your mental wounds. The site is offering a download of one of the band's 'lost songs', You Owe Me One.

In reality, the track is not so much lost as hard-to-find. It was a B-side on one of their later, less popular singles but has just been re-released on the band's latest cash-in sublime "Complete Studio Recordings" boxset.

The song is famous amongst fans because it was due to feature on Abba's never-completed ninth studio album. It even has a rather grandly titled "fanclub", which is little more than a glorified webpage.

Beware: This is not the sort of Abba song you'll like if you're a fan of Mamma Mia and Dancing Queen. It bears more relation to late-period "The Visitors" Abba. You know, that cheesy sing-song synth nonsense that Erasure have been trying to emulate since 1992.

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