12/13/07

I Can't Shut Up About Lykke Li

I want to build on yesterday's post about Lykke Li.

It makes me sound like a crazy person, I know, but Sweden is sort of ruining my life. Every time I've been dumped, it's been either so that the other person can go on to date a Swede, or because I do not measure up to the person's Swedish former lovers, or they're leaving for Sweden or something. The phantom of Stockholm has been ruining my love life and emotional well-being for almost ten years. I'm not kidding.

Which brings me to the fact that I FEEL LIKE SWEDISH POP MUSIC IS RUINING MY LIFE. Everyone who name-checks these Swedish bands is participating in what I see as my downfall. Anniemal was a great record. Yes. But for me, it was also the soundtrack to the singularly worst times of my life so far. Swedish music inspires a very real panic in me. As anyone who has had the good fortune to go out nightclubbing with me can attest, the opening bars of "Bubblegum" come on and I start running.

Similarly, I was sort of the Knife last year, but more than a few nights spent at the bar elicit a sort of Pavlovian response to 'Heartbeats', where I can taste cigarette smoke and stale beer and feel like I'm going to punch somebody out. Right then.

So whatever, I won't belabor the point about how nearly all unfortunate things in my life somehow connect to Sweden. Suffice it to say that in my opinion, Lykke Li is the only thing of Swedish origin (in terms of pop music for American kids) that doesn't make me want to speedily and messily kill myself, in public.

I wrote yesterday about 'Little Bit' and it's video, as well as Leif's brilliant cover of it. I was thinking last night about cover songs and trying to sort of subvert a song when you cover it, like, if it's a disco song do it as a punk song or something. So then I found this video. It's Lykke Li doing an acoustic version of 'Little Bit' on a street corner in what I imagine from my nightmares to be Stockholm.

So, a really sparse, staccato, post-Bjork pixie-ish song. Definite nods to New Wave and Reggaeton. This version totally refigures the song as a, like, folk sing along. Seems kind of cointerintuitive. Here's the thing: IT TOTALLY WORKS AND I LOVE LYKKE LI AND CANNOT SHUT UP ABOUT THIS FUCKING SONG. SOMEONE DUMP ME SO I CAN MOVE ON.










(actually no don't really dump me)




1 comment:

DD said...

Ha! Annie is norwegian. this one is great: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJHdT1j6hH8&feature=related see who starts singing with lykke? Robyn, another great swedish singer/producer. Listen to this one next time you get dumpt, i do and it breaks me to pieces: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHevyZ48Wts wish you the best! die schwedin