Far from being a one-hit sauna wonder, KAJ have been performing together for over fifteen years, having formed the group when they were in high school together. Despite being Huge In Swedish-Speaking Finland - TV shows! Two full-length musicals! Arena tours! - I love that they remain disarmingly normal and close to their roots; their music videos for instance tend to be literal DIY jobs, where they physically build the sets themselves with the help of friends and family and do the storyboarding with an A4 pad and a biro at the kitchen table.

Taco Hej (me. Gu$ta) is an immediately-cheering absolute bop, and this English translation is pretty good, with the following essential cultural notes:

"Taco hej" sounds identical to "tack och hej" which means "thank you and goodbye" in Swedish

"Me Gusta" - Gusta is an old-fashioned granddad-type name, and "me" sounds like "with", so the full title of the song reads as "Taco Hey (feat. Gusta)"

For no readily explicable reason, "Taco Fridays" are a huge thing across most of Scandinavia, where we all collectively decide to have tex mex-inspired food for dinner once a week 🤷‍♀️

"Myskväll" - a cosy evening in - is also an almost universal scandi concept, implying a relaxed low-key night with nearest and dearest, with overtones of being warm and snug while the winter snows blizzard away outside the triple glazing

youtube.com/watch?v=6q3Z8XvLVl…

And this behind the scenes making-of the one-shot (!) video is just delightful
youtube.com/watch?v=xSNX8QPR7j…

#SmallCheeringThings #KAJ #Music

I unashamedly have this synth-pop masterpiece on repeat, and it makes me smile every time I listen to it

Lyrics:

Dance floor

(From time immemorial,
People have come together
Under one united flag,
The flag which is known as
Dance)

Got no time to worry about any inessentials
Like what language you speak, where you work, or what your name is,
We're gonna carpe this evening,
It's time to grab the throttle,
It's up to us to get the party going

Couldn't care less how much you've got in your bank account,
As long as you're here to dance and are pronto,
The jacket has been hung up,
The frontal lobe has been shut down,
Can you hear the hit song, drag me out into the centre of your

Dance floor
Packed with people
Don't need a simultaneous translator
I understand what you're saying
When we're out here on the
Dance floor
Packed with people
Unalloyed delight*
So cheers to you baby
It's a long time til tomorrow tonight

Your dirty dancing is jolly good
Swaying about here in dirlanda**
I can hear what your body's saying,
Get over here and ask me to dance,
I won't leave my baby in the corner,

Have you thought about all the positive health benefits
That we get as a bonus as we're standing here flailing about,
The blood is pumping,
The sweat is pouring,
As long as the beat's alive
We're going to live for ever
On a

Dance floor
Packed with people
etc.

*A joke that is impossible to translate: a slightly archaic phrase for "fly in the ointment" is "smolk i glädjebägaren", literally "a speck of dust in the goblet of joy", so the line here is "bägare utan smolk" - goblet without any dust in it - which is followed by the line "så skål på dig baby", "so cheers to you, baby". I've gone for "unalloyed delight" as a translation because that is the spirit of it and it scans with the original, but it does completely miss the gag

**reference to a Finnish earworm from the 1970s

youtube.com/watch?v=0vnYsxssol…

#SmallCheeringThings #KAJ #Music

KAJ are my favourite type of songwriters: genre-spanning, lyrics full of subtle, complex, and very silly word-play, and with the delight in detail and hyper-specificity which is the essence of good comedy. Also, the lads can properly sing.

TEXT-TV is a glory of 80s-style synth mixed with melodic rap and a banging chorus, about the wonders of Teletext, and I've chosen a live version to link here, because the staging goes much, much harder than a song about Teletext has any right to.

youtube.com/watch?v=F9GrbrduuN…

Lyrics:

(In a world of disinformation,
There is one last reliable outpost:
Teletext)

Eight hours a day I sit and wait for the day to end,
Work finishes at 2, and there's something that I'm waiting for,
Eight hours a day I sit and long for the moment when I can go home,
As soon as I clock out, I hasten home where delights await

I just want to sit on the sofa
And be the boss of the remote control,
Now I can take charge,
Push the button and dive right in

Teletext is my second home
And the things you read there are the truth,
There is sport and weather
And the font is easily legible and clear
(Teletext doesn't lie
Read the news in 8-bit)
Teletext is a paradise
You get all your info in a simple way
We've got 899 pages of top quality
On teletext

Eight hours a night, I'm hitting that button,
Flipping through the pages,
Check out 302, the programme guide for Channel 2,
Eight hours a night I'm riding an analogue wave that never ebbs away,
Checking the Formula 1, something went wrong for Bottas in the curves,
I just want to sit on my throne
Of low-res information,
It warms the heart to be allowed to be
In the virtual boiler room

Teletext is my second home etc.

Go to page 488, those the right numbers if you've got a lottery ticket,
761, the wind is blowing from the north, the same numbers on Maikkari* will get you porn,
866 I think will suit you if you like pixelated cats,
Just navigate to 403 if you're a fan of the shipping forecast

Teletext is my second home etc

*Maikkari is another name for the Finnish TV channel MTV3

#SmallCheeringThings #KAJ #Music

KAJ's native Vårö dialect is, as discussed above, very niche, old-fashioned-sounding, and above all inescapably rural - this part of Ostrobothnia contains very few people, lots of livestock, and mainly just endless forests and fields.
Which makes it a brilliantly silly choice of language in which to do very urban gangsta rap.

Kom ti Byin - Come to the Village - is a phenomenal track, catchy, funny, and slightly melancholy, a heartfelt clear-eyed love letter to a very specific corner of the world.

The video is also gorgeous, and shows off why everyone should go to beautiful Ostrobothnia for their holidays.

I have a couple of minor quibbles with the otherwise excellent translation and background-knowledge footnotes at the link below:

Towards the end of the song, the English "countryside" has been used for "glesbyggdsort", which while technically correct, doesn't have the same emotional punch - the word is a bureaucratic one, and literally translates as "sparsely-populated district", which under the official definition means "more than 45 minutes' drive from a place with more than 3000 inhabitants". For me the word carries strong connotations of the intensely Scandinavian feeling of vast space and isolation - our countries are geographically big and our populations relatively tiny - where any threads of community have to stretch very long and thin but are durable nonetheless.

And in the penultimate line of the song, where the word "holk" has been given as "hulk" for some reason, but it actually means "birdhouse".

(Scroll down to the end of the linked page for video with simultaneous translation)

lyricstranslate.com/en/kom-ti-… #SmallCheeringThings #KAJ #Music

Continuing KAJ-fest with another stonkingly good and very silly song, Kallna Mat is a sumptuous bit of smooth trance-y melodious rap about food that isn't properly hot. I love these guys so much.

youtube.com/watch?v=7iKATnV5xB…

Lyrics:

Food gone cold, eating cold food (yeah)
Food gone cold, eating cold food (uh)
Food gone cold, eating cold food
(Yep yep yep)

The worst thing in the world is when you come home
And someone has cooked for you
But you were a bit delayed
So the food isn't hot any more

Food gone cold, eating cold food (yeah)
Food gone cold, eating cold food (cold)
Food gone cold, eating cold food
(Yep yep yep)

I agree, and speaking of which,
I ordered a delivery from Wolt*,
Ought to have been easy and seamless,
O Sole Mio** was going to sate my hunger,
But the delivery person delivered slowly,
The food's gone cold, that's a fact,
I was furious and wanted to make a formal complaint,
But I started eating and it slipped down anyway

Food gone cold, eating cold food (uh)
Food gone cold, eating cold food (cold)
Food gone cold, eating cold food (fuck)

Soon the plates could come falling down
If you come at me with food gone cold,
A thousand fires and a burning hate,
Food gone cold

Are you getting a spark?
It's lit.
Let's go.

Cold sausages are always painful,
Only a crazy person would eat them when they're cool enough to touch,
So join the gang and be part of the huddle,
Hot dogs so hot that they burn your tongue.

We think food that's gone cold is tragic,
Extremely regrettable, how can that shit even be legal?
Room temperature fodder has lost its soul
Who wants to eat food that's tepid and gross?

My food has to be hot-hot
Straight from the oven it's yum-yum
Salad and cold dressing - boycott
Chocolate fondue then? Why not

Any less than 80 degrees and it's lost something,
If it's tapas and tacos, I'm out,
Got some lukewarm lasagna here, where shall I put it?
Fuck that shit or heat it up on the stove.

Food gone cold, eating cold food (uh)
Food gone cold, eating cold food (yeah)
Food gone cold, eating cold food
(yuck)

Twice a day, that food has got to be hot

(Yep yep yep)

*Finnish online restaurant delivery service
**Typical name for an Italian restaurant in the unimaginative Nordics

CAVEAT - there are a couple of words in this that I am having to guess at, the dialect is so impenetrable! I love it so much! :) and if there is anyone from Österbotten here who would like to correct me I would be delighted ❤

#SmallCheeringThings #KAJ #Music

More #SmallCheeringThings and KAJ-fest keeps on rolling! (Scroll upthread for more explanation and more bangers from Ostrobothnia)

First up today, the international anthem we need in these fractured times, Paavos Barkbrö - Paavo's Bread Made With Tree-bark.

Rousing, moving, and yet somehow at the same time still immensely silly, this is a hymn to solidarity and community, and is I think a work of genius.

It does need a lot of cultural background, and happily YouTube user @dzzimmy has left a great explanation under the video, which I'm copying wholesale, with thanks:
"This song is inspired by the poem “Högt bland Saarijärvis moar” ("High on Saarijärvi’s moors"), written by Finland's national poet, J.L. Runeberg. In Finnish, the poem is known as “Saarijärven Paavo.”

In the poem, the farmer Paavo’s harvests fail year after year. He and his family are forced to “mix bark into the bread” — a common famine practice in the Nordics. When the harvest finally succeeds, Paavo’s wife rejoices, thinking they can now enjoy better days without bark bread. But Paavo replies (paraphrased): “Mix more bark into the bread, for our neighbour’s crops have frozen and failed.”

It’s essentially a tale about perseverance through hardship and solidarity with your fellow man.

Much of the Finnish national identity was shaped by Runeberg’s early 19th-century poetry, which often tells stories of ordinary people enduring and prevailing: Farmer Paavo and his struggles, Landshövding Wibelius who protected civilians by upholding the rule of law, and Sven Dufva, a soldier simple in mind but brave and pure of heart."

Live version, with full chorus of schoolchildren, and also English subtitles, here:
youtube.com/watch?v=TLxHtt33_S…

#KAJ #Music

Mosquito should be the europop dance-floor filler of the summer and indeed every summer, a universal experience rendered in perfect earworm form, plus also an unexpected accordion.
And if Bara Bada Bastu didn't convince you of the fact that "perkele" is the most satisfying swear word in existence, this will.

youtube.com/watch?v=1vao5I9lLG…

Lyrics:
Mo- mo- mosquito
El bandito
Te- terroristo
El diablo

I'm lying here in the sunshine, and life is nice
But one-two-three they appear, surprise surprise
Every year in summer it's as if
The wretches take one look at my body and think "blood buffet"

(Ah-ah-ah, aj-aj-aj*
Ah-aj-aj-aj)

When the buzzing intensifies I start to panic

(Ah-ah-ah, aj-aj-aj
Ah-aj-aj-aj)

Is it a bird
Is it a plane
Or the Egyptian plague?

Mo- mo- mosquito
El bandito
Te- terroristo
El diablo

(Ah-ah-ah, aj-aj-aj
Ah-aj-aj-aj)

They bite me on my head and my thighs

They arrive in the middle of the night, I am under attack
The fly along the walls, what a bunch of fucking hooligans,
I wave my arms about like a psycho and scream "go away!"
Spraying around in circles yelling "bite me!" **

(Ah-ah-ah, aj-aj-aj
Ah-aj-aj-aj)

Is it a bird
Is it a plane
Or the E-- PERKELE

Mo- mo- mosquito
El bandito
Te- terroristo
El diablo

(Ah-ah-ah, aj-aj-aj
Ah-aj-aj-aj)

Itching over my entire body

Hyttynen*** from Sahara to Vörå
Hyttynen and I keep on flailing (go away!)
Hyttynen from Sahara to Vörå
Hyttynen when you sit I'm going to hit (aah)

(Ah-ah-ah, aj-aj-aj
Ah-aj-aj-aj)

Mo- mo- mosquito
El bandito
(Ah-ah-ah, aj-aj-aj
Ah-aj-aj-aj)

You suck and I can't take any more

*many layered meanings in one small word - "aj" means "ouch", and "ajajaj" can be used both as a warning to look out for something, and as a general "whoops, blimey, oh dear", and as an expression of sympathy

** almost untranslatable pun alert: the original is "stick och brinn" - literally "go away and burn", a common expression to mean "fuck off" generally - but "stick" also has the dual meaning of "to bite", as in insect bite.

*** Finnish for mosquito

#SmallCheeringThings #KAJ #Music