It’s “Who are these people?” Wednesday!…
[Video][Myspace]
[4.88]
Chuck Eddy: In 1995, “Scatman (Ski Ba Bop Ba Dop Bop)” by Scatman John reached #2 on the Swedish charts — not as good as it did in Austria, Belgium, Ireland, Italy, Norway, or Switzerland. But in Sweden, the repercussions continue to this day.
[6]
Martin Skidmore: What the world has been waiting for: swing music with Swedish rappers on top. Something like swing anyway — sounds kinda like swing week on some East European Idol show. The rapping bounces along perkily enough, but I’ve no idea what he’s on about, and the title hardly clarifies matters. It’s bright enough, but could also annoy.
[5]
David Raposa: Movits!, as their Wiki page claims and as this single is all too eager to illustrate, is a Swedish hip-hop swing band. Movits! must also be the name of some supernatural creature who, like Candyman or Beetlejuice, will wreak havoc on the world if someone says their name three times.
[2]
Kat Stevens: Terry and June has finally been dubbed into Swedish! I can die happy.
[7]
Anthony Easton: This speed and this instrumentation requires either crispness (Ute Lemper does Hollander) or total release (Googol Bordello); by being unable to deliver either it disintegrates into mush.
[4]
Iain Mew: I really liked “We No Speak Americano” when we covered it a while back, but also assumed I’d never hear it again. Now I spend much of the length of the broadly similar “Äppelknyckarjazz” (love the enthusiastic enunciating of the title at the start, by the way!) wondering whether it’s totally ridiculous to consider this as a potential UK number one. Hip-hop is probably not as popular a way to update swing as dance was, and the language barrier might be too great in this case, but who knows. If it does become as omnipresent, I certainly wouldn’t mind.
[7]
Maura Johnston: Every generation gets its own… Squirrel Nut Zippers?
[2]
Jonathan Bogart: There are several warring impulses within me as I try to rate this. First, I want to encourage all resurrection of pre-rock music into modern contexts. Second, I’m wary of being seen to embrace music as definitively uncool as the swing revival of the 90s (Cherry Poppin’ Daddies et al.). Third, dude’s not really rapping, he’s singing a patter song, which is fine but you don’t get to call yourself hip-hop if you’re doing something Cab Calloway did in 1931. And fourth, it was released in the US on Comedy Central Records. I like a lot of Comedy Central releases — but if this is supposed to be funny, fuck them.
[6]