Just call him Bråndon Flöwers…
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[5.57]
Will Adams: Oh look, a Killers song with excessive reverb and an even more unsteady Brandon Flowers on vocals. And passed through a sonic Instagram filter.
[5]
Patrick St. Michel: There is an ’80s-themed bar my friends and I go to a lot that takes song requests, and one person I go there with always requests “Heaven” by Bryan Adams. I’ve heard that track so much in the last few months that all I can hear when listening to this song is “Heaven.” Then, as the song unfolds, all I hear is “When You Were Young.” I spend the entirety of “Det Kommer” thinking about other artists, barely thinking about the music actually playing at all. I think that’s a misuse of influences.
[4]
Iain Mew: Previously I knew that Håkan Hellström was a really successful rock singer in Sweden, and that was about it. Now I know him as the genius who decided to take The Killers’ “When You Were Young,” make it sound even more ‘80s, and somehow made a much better song. Giving new weight to the verses through the emphasis on ominous guitar chug is the key, I think, taking the song out through overbearing and into unstoppable. Either that, or not being able to understand the lyrics has given me a new appreciation for the existing hooks.
[8]
Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: Swede forgets song, perfectly emulates every windswept indie milestone instead.
[7]
Brad Shoup: It’s like a Bob FM event horizon.
[6]
Edward Okulicz: Crib one-third “When You Were Young” and one-third “Summer of ’69” and call your song the Swedish for “It will never be over for me” and you’re on risky ground. But this is nothing new: Hellström has always been a bit of a bowerbird, borrowing liberally from Morrissey, Dylan, and countless others, not just lyrics but aesthetic and ambition too. I salute the relatively low-brow influences here, but the one-third that’s not pilfered is enough that “Det Kommer Aldrig Va Över För Mig” is disorientating — you recognise a bit, then the melody goes somewhere else before returning to other familiar ground; it’s quite strange to feel so jerked around musically, and I’d love to hear it with ears that have never heard the songs I (and Hellström) have, but I can’t. Which is not to say that you can’t pass a judgment; what he does with “When You Were Young” is quite beautiful, as if the song was always supposed to sound like a faint memory from the 1980s. It’s just that his singing voice isn’t even close to being up to the job.
[6]
Anthony Easton: Washed out guitars and weedy vocals sound no better in Swedish than they do in English. Good to know.
[3]