I got pretty music in my ears

Torgny Melins - Rock & Roll Highschool
Joining A*Teens and West End Girls in making cover albums of one group is Torgny Melins, whose new cd is 100% Teddybears Sthlm!

In Sweden, one of the oldest forms of pop music is “dansband”. The whole idea of dansband is simple; it’s supposed to be fun, easy-loving, instant and danceable. However, the latest 30 years, dansband has had a bit of a geek-status. That’s why it's fucking hilarious when a dansband-group make a CD with just Teddybears STHLM-songs! Yes, you heard right! Geeky old-man pop dansband versions of the biggest hits from the worlds greatest Teddybears (who by the way is my favourite hip-hop act of all time).

The lyrics has been “dansbandinized” in the sense that all swear-words has been cut out. I mean, the music is for oldies and therefore swearing is strictly forbidden! For example the line “I look so fucking good” has been changed to “I’m desperate looking good” (which by the way is a bit ironic since the band might even be uglier than the Rolling Stones). When you listen to it, try to see it in a comedian way, and not directly think they’ve murdered the song.

Bonus: Dansbander – it’s ‘Hiphopper’/’Punkrocker’ - brilliantly renamed ‘Dansbander’. They made a music video for this one, which I’ve seen a couple of times on Sweden’s biggest music channel ZTV, and they normally never show dansband-videos, so a great achievement by the Torgny's there.

Bonus 2: Yours To Keep – really quite beautiful, actually. The fact that Teddybears Sthlm never made a ballad-version of this song is weird, since the result is splendid.

posted by Chrille @ 4/08/2006