
Dork – Legs
The second worst thing that you can tell somebody from Northern Europe, if you’ve known them for a few decades, is that you love them. That will really freak them out.
The very worst thing that you can do is sit next to them on the bus or the train. They won’t say anything, of course. They are too polite to do that. But they’ll ring their therapist as soon as they get home and devise a plan of meetings for the winter.
Now, it’s true that people are lonelier than ever. And it’s true that most people like it that way. But you only really feel this in the really well-to-do, civilised countries. Back in Eastern Europe, South America or Turkiye, the lady at the supermarket asks about your parents, and strangers sit inches away from each other’s faces on the bus while lighting each other’s cigarettes.
Dork’s “Legs” is a really nice pop song with great social commentary. In fact, it’s a defining moment in Nordic pop. The singer gets your attention from the very first line in which she confesses that she’d rather break her own legs than attend an uncomfortable social gathering and spends the rest of the song trying to have you forget she said it. It’s fun, it’s subdued, and it’s filled with loneliness. It should be played on repeat in every airport in Northern Europe in order to keep the locals happy and make the visitors properly hear what they’re getting themselves into.
Kaala – SILICONE
There’s a great conspiracy in pop music, and you’ve been on to it all along. You just chose to ignore it! Your favourite pop stars are not who they seem to be. It’s not like they’re allowed to do or say any of the things that they would like to do. No, they do not post their own pics on Instagram. No, they don’t post their videos on TikTok. And, of course, everything that they say in interviews is coached.
It’s not real, but neither are most things in this modern world. The gold-winning athletes all take steroids. The presidents are bought off by giant corporations. Interpersonal relationships are hardly ever based on love and trust. Everything is fake, but since there’s no real way to stop it, you’ve gone along with the plan.
Kaala’s “SILICONE” is a pop song built on subtly aggressive electro-instrumentation that pulls at the listener from every angle. This is designed to create tension as powerful as the one described by the singer. Kaala may be talking about a love affair that’s shallow and has been doomed from the start. But the singer might as well be talking about the pop music world, which rarely includes songs of such depth or featuring such daring musical inventiveness.