Read news from:
Austria
SHARE
COPY LINK

MUSIC

LISTEN: Is this the strangest song ever written about Copenhagen?

Denmark and its lovely capital city have inspired numerous songs over the years and now a new and rather strange one can be added to the list.

Published: 2 November 2018 16:51 CET
LISTEN: Is this the strangest song ever written about Copenhagen?
How Mark Kozelek prefers to see Copenhagen. Photo: Depositphotos
Danny Kaye’s iconic ‘Wonderful Copenhagen’ may be the best-known of the bunch, but popular international artists including Tom Waits, Lucinda Williams and Van Morrisson have also penned Copenhagen-inspired tunes. 
 
The American singer-songwriter Mark Kozelek has also detailed his love for Denmark in song, most notably in the track ‘UK Blues’, where he croons that in Denmark “everybody's white, everyone rides bikes”. On Thursday, Kozelek added another song to the Copenhagen canon, although it’s probably safe to say this one is a bit weirder than the others. 
 
 
Performed under his Sun Kil Moon moniker, Kozelek’s newest album ‘This is My Dinner’ includes a ten-minute track simply titled ‘Copenhagen’ that showcases his trademark freeform, stream of consciousness style. 
 
 
In it, we learn that the Scandic Copenhagen is his “favourite hotel in Scandinavia”, where they know him by name and always give him a courtyard room with extra blankets and pillows.
 
The track was written on a flight to Copenhagen from Baden, Switzerland and Kozelek spends the first three minutes recounting a flirtatious post-gig meeting with a married woman in Baden that then veers off into memories of elementary school kids with speech development issues and how he’s still got his “own scars from my high school remedial reading classes”.
 
Once that’s out of the way, Kozelek really starts riffing on Copenhagen, starting with his past success in having threesomes in the Danish capital. 
 
“The line that I use is always exactly the same /I say I’ve got a cosy bed back in my hotel that will fit three/ and they say, ‘Ok, let’s go’,” he sings. 
 
We then hear about his first memory of Copenhagen, in which he met a girl “outside a Chinese restaurant” in 1997 who “is still one of my dear friends”. 
 
Listeners are then treated to a mini-rant about Copenhagen’s cyclists, who he hopes will be hampered by snowfall by the time his flight lands. 
 
“I hope the canals are frozen/ I prefer to see the bikes stuck in the ice/ People cycle too fast on their bikes/ Jesus Christ, Scandinavians love their fucking bikes!”
 
 
Despite the annoyance at the city’s two-wheeled commuters, Kozelek makes it clear he loves Copenhagen.
 
“I’m going to tell you something from the bottom of my heart / I’m not lying / my favourite place to tour is Scandinavia and that’s a fact / the trains are peaceful / the scenery is serene / the promoters are honest and they always put me in the Scandic/ and your English skills are fantastic.”
 
The song then veers into TMI territory. 
 
“I’m looking forward to playing tomorrow night in Copenhagen / and yeah I’m older now and I won’t end up in a threesome,” he sings, before going off on riffs about his previous promiscuity (“indie rock’s answer to Wilt Chamberlain”) and current inability to get an erection, both of which are probably best left unwritten here. 
 
Before wrapping up this very unconventional ode to the Danish capital, which he acknowledges has “been long enough,” Kozelek turns to one of his favourite subjects: boxing.
 
The Ohio native is a well-known boxing fan and often sings about the sport and its athletes, so perhaps it’s not a huge surprise that he finishes the song with a tribute to Brian Nielsen, the Danish heavyweight who went 64-3 in his career, with two of his losses at the hands of legends Mike Tyson and Evander Holyfield. 
 
“Let’s give it up for Denmark’s Brian Nielsen. He wasn’t much of a fighter but he had the heart of a lion,” Kozelek croons three times, thus ending perhaps the strangest song ever written about Copenhagen. 
 
‘This is My Dinner’ was released on Thursday and is the prolific Kozelek’s second full-length album of 2018. He’s released over 50 albums under either his own name or the Sun Kil Moon moniker or as part of the Red House Painters. 

CULTURE

New songs mark sixth anniversary of French star Johnny Hallyday’s death

Fans of the late Johnny Hallyday, "the French Elvis Presley", will be able to commemorate the sixth anniversary of his death with two songs never released before.

Published: 17 November 2023 09:05 CET
New songs mark sixth anniversary of French star Johnny Hallyday's death

Hallyday, blessed with a powerful husky voice and seemingly boundless energy, died in December 2017, aged 74, of lung cancer after a long music and acting career.

After an estimated 110 million records sold during his lifetime – making him one of the world’s best-selling singers -Hallyday’s success has continued unabated beyond his death.

Almost half of his current listeners on Spotify are under the age of 35, according to the streaming service, and a posthumous greatest hits collection of “France’s favourite rock’n’roller”, whose real name was Jean-Philippe Leo
Smet, sold more than half a million copies.

The two new songs, Un cri (A cry) and Grave-moi le coeur (Engrave my heart), are featured on two albums published by different labels which also contain already-known hits in remastered or symphonic versions.

Un cri was written in 2017 by guitarist and producer Maxim Nucci – better known as Yodelice – who worked with Hallyday during the singer’s final years.

At the time Hallyday had just learned that his cancer had returned, and he “felt the need to make music outside the framework of an album,” Yodelice told reporters this week.

Hallyday recorded a demo version of the song, accompanied only by an acoustic blues guitar, but never brought it to full production.

Sensing the fans’ unbroken love for Hallyday, Yodelice decided to finish the job.

He separated the voice track from the guitar which he felt was too tame, and arranged a rockier, full-band accompaniment.

“It felt like I was playing with my buddy,” he said.

The second song, Grave-moi le coeur, is to be published in December under the artistic responsibility of another of the singer’s close collaborators, the arranger Yvan Cassar.

Hallyday recorded the song – a French version of Elvis’s Love Me Tender – with a view to performing it at a 1996 show in Las Vegas.

But in the end he did not play it live, opting instead for the original English-language version, and did not include it in any album.

“This may sound crazy, but the song was on a rehearsal tape that had never been digitalised,” Cassar told AFP.

The new songs are unlikely to be the last of new Hallyday tunes to delight fans, a source with knowledge of his work said. “There’s still a huge mass of recordings out there spanning his whole career,” the source said.

SHOW COMMENTS