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Culture
Scandinavian music Swedish producer Alesso has paired up with a fellow international pop export from his home country – Zara Larsson – for a collaboration. They’ve just released new single and video, Words. It’s a house tune with a seductively cool bassline sitting under an absolute heart-breaker of a lyric. They sound perfect together, however. As do Alesso and Zara. New music from the critically acclaimed Norwegian talent Metteson is always a delight, and now he’s back with latest single, Second Heart. It’s a spectacular ballad that builds beautifully to dramatic effect, and during which he lays his heart (or second heart?) bare for our listening pleasure. Faroese popstar Reiley is out with a brand-new tune, Blah Blah Blah. He’s gone from sampling the iPhone ringtone on his debut (true story, check out Let It Ring), to sampling Kylie Minogue on this new one; specifically, Can’t Get You Out Of My Head. With that iconic song’s trills of “la la la, la-
la, la-la-la”, he’s created a whole new pop behemoth. And two decades later, that infamous melody is once again gonna be a permanent fixture in our collective heads throughout the summer. He’s co-written Austria’s entry to the Eurovision Song Contest in Turin in May, and now Swedish artist Flyckt is out with a delightful new track himself – a cover of Swedish synthpop group Kite’s hit Jonny Boy. It’s a thoroughly charming number that grabs via the most rousing of melodies, accompanied by a matching feelgood production. And whistling, too! Veritable bucketfuls of whistling. 22-year-old Eah hails from Gothenburg and first made a name for himself via his own TikTok channel, leading to him featuring on a hit Estraden single last year. Now he’s out with his own debut – Dränker Mina Tankar. With it, we get youthful angst channelled into musical references beyond its years. This song brings to mind
Columns
By Karl Batterbee
melancholy-ridden ‘80s pop from acts like Depeche Mode. But brought right up to date and perfect for a post-Victor Leksell Swedish soundscape. Web: www.scandipop.co.uk
Food acclimatisation Fitting in as a teenager isn’t just about fashion and music. It’s also about what you eat. This is especially true if you’re also from a different country. It’s all very well to bring your weird snacks across borders as an adult, but when you’re 15 it’s best avoided. Grossing out a school canteen with your lunch does not help you win friends. Luckily, my moving to the UK coincided with a period of mostly consuming bread and Swiss roll, which put me in a good position to fit into an English comprehensive. I balked at using the ‘tuck shop’ on account of not knowing what one was. Same with ‘mince pies’ and various other foods (spotted dick, anyone?). Egg – I came to understand – was of great importance to British teenagers. There were many varieties of egg to be mastered. A particular victory came when a girl invited me to her house for lunch. I watched as she whisked butter, milk and egg together, then put the lot in the microwave.
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By Maria Smedstad
after neighbors expressed alarm at what they assumed was a corpse decomposing somewhere in the village. My final triumph was another take on ‘egg’. I still remember the disapproving look on my mum’s face as she watched me carefully cutting toast into soldiers and dunking them into raw egg yolk. “You’ve become too British,” she complained, and just like that, I knew that the road to acceptance lay brightly ahead.
Sound basic? To me, the concept was wild, but I pretended to know all about scrambled eggs while I hacked rock-solid butter onto a soggy slice of toast and mimicked my unsuspecting host by dipping the whole thing in ketchup. My parents adjusted on a smaller scale, for example by discretely putting a stop to the import of fermented herring,
Maria Smedstad moved to the UK from Sweden in 1994. She received a degree in Illustration in 2001, before settling in the capital as a freelance cartoonist, creating the autobiographical cartoon Em. Maria writes a column on the trials and tribulations of life as a Swede in the UK.
May 2022 |
Issue 142 |
127
