Tag: Robin

Robin feat. Nelli Matula – Hula Hula

“Something about flowers.”

Tim: Robin, you may or may not remember, first appeared on these pages about five years ago as a pre-pubescent teen singing about skateboarding.

Tom: Weirdly, I do actually remember that. I don’t remember the song, but I do remember complaining about how young he was.

Tim: Well, he’s grown up a bit since then, and is rapidly approaching album number four; still all about the extra-curricular activities, though.

Tom: Sounds like a Balearic ballad, but sung in Finnish. That takes a verse or two to get used to.

Tim: Yes, and what with it being Finnish, Google isn’t much help with the lyrics (one line apparently means “Jo comes further thaw melts”), but it’s basically all about dancing, with hips moving all over the place, the sun shining down, and something about flowers.

Tom: That’s better than the Macarena, at least.

Tim: To be honest, the song gets at least two of those three things across nicely, and the third’s probably not too important anyway.

Tom: It’s forgettable, and I don’t think it’s about to be the sound of the summer, but I’ve been wrong before.

Tim: I don’t think you’re wrong here, to be honest, but it’s a nice track, and most importantly it’s one of the few summer tracks around that isn’t stuck in a tropical genre, which somehow is still going on. Oh, joy…

Robin – Yö Kuuluu Meille

“Well, that’s properly good and loud.”

Tim: Remember Jimi Constantine? If you don’t, go back here and wonder how on earth you forgot him. Anyway, he’s written this and and Robin’s picked it up, with a heftier sound that is entirely appropriate when young artists put out their third album.

Tom: Well, that’s properly good and loud.

Tim: I’m gonna be honest: I have very mixed feelings about this song. Title translates roughly as “The Night Belongs To Us” and yeah, I get that vibe from it. Thing is, I have very, very mixed feelings about this. The chorus is great – raucous, well sung and with exactly the right amount of attitude. The pre-chorus, also showing up intermittently between the rap bits? Also good. BUT, those rap bits. Well, they’re rap bits, and we know how I generally feel about those in songs.

Tom: It’s also “Walk This Way”. Seriously. Listen to that middle eight: the guitar riffs, the drums, the cadence of the lyrics. It’s not close enough to be actionable, I’ll bet, but that sounds really rather familiar.

Tim: WE’VE RUN OUT OF MUSIC, TOM. And on the other hand, I was able to keep myself from switching it off, because of the knowledge that the chorus would be returning, so I’m guessing that gives an overall positive view. Basically, the chorus is better than the crap is bad, so it’ll do.

Robin feat. Lord Est – Tilttaamaan

“An inevitably awful rap middle eight.”

Tim: You may or may not remember Robin, who’s featured on these pages a few times previously; you most likely won’t remember Lord Est, who hasn’t.

Tom: “Robin” is a bold name in a market already saturated with various Robins and Robyns. Still, let’s see what he’s got.

Tim: A warning: audibly, the middle eight is awful. Visually, it’s rather special, so stay with the video for it.

Tim: “Look! I know I’m overweight and in my mid-forties, but I can be cool! Really! Look! I’ve got sunglasses! And a leather jacket! I’m waving my hands out to kids who are street do! I say ‘street’ and everything! I’m SO COOL.”

Tom: “Lord Est”, huh? I assume he’s the Finnish Daz Sampson, with a similarly lengthy musical pedigree.

Tim: Blimey, yes. That part aside, though, I like this track. Now summer’s approaching (he writes, as it pours down with rain outside), the summer tracks seem to be out in force, and I for am happy with that. Yes, they tend to bring with them inevitably awful rap middle eights (actually, has there ever been a good one? Aside from Wannabe, obviously.), but they’re manageable.

Tom: Mmf. It’s an okay track, I guess, but I’d file it under “well produced” then actually “good”.

Tim: Possibly – the backing and his vocals are all fairly competent and largely enjoyable, and if you’re wondering the conversation in the video’s about him asking her who she was, her responding by telling him to follow her on Instagram (obvs), and then at the end her inviting him to a beach party. BEACH PARTY! FUN! YAY!

Tom: Here comes the summer.

Robin – Erilaiset

“That’s a decent enough charity track, isn’t it.”

Tim: You do, I presume, remember ‘BOOM KAH! BOOM BOOM KAH!” Here’s the follow-up, which is actually the Red Nose Day single in Finland, but they’ve chosen to make no mention whatsoever of that on the YouTube page.

Tom: Finnish Red Nose Day, of course, is whenever the temperature dips below -20°C in Oulu.

Tim: Nicely played, sir. Here’s the track.

Tim: That’s a decent enough charity track, isn’t it.

Tom: It is: it’s certainly better than some of the dreck we’ve had before. It’s certainly better than One Direction covering Teenage Kicks.

Tim: Well, duh. What I particularly like, and what may well not work if I spoke Finnish, is the way it almost goes into the chorus thirty seconds in, but then drops back out for the rest of the verse before the main chorus comes in bigger and better than what you originally thought it would be.

Tom: Yep, I was going to point that out too. It’s a good shtick, and I can see that becoming a Thing.

Tim: Aside from that, actually, it’s somewhat average as far as pop songs go, but it does have a slightly ‘urban’ edge to it in the intro and outro which is probably a good thing as far as his future intentions go so well done there. Also, half an hour on from writing everything previous to this, I’ve clicked replay on it every time it’s finished, so it’s clearly listenable. GOOD WORK CHARITY.

Robin feat. Mikael Gabriel & Uniikki – Boom Kah

That rap middle eight is awful.

Tim: Cast your mind back to the beginning of last year, you might remember this kid singing a not particularly bad song about skateboarding. Fifteen per cent of his life later, he’s back with a freshly broken voice and ready to show off more of his after-school activities.

Tom: Has he done a Miley Cyrus? He’s a bit too young to have done a Miley Cyrus, surely?

Tom: Nope. He’s done a Bieber.

Tim: There are a lot of things I like about this: the chorus, the instrumental post-chorus, the verses, even the video to some extent. I specifically don’t like the rap middle eight (which now I think about it seems to be slightly going out of fashion, which is nice).

Tom: That rap middle eight is awful. It’s like the Blackout Crew suddenly burst in.

Tim: Mostly, though, I’m just not sure about the titular BOOM KAH – it works well enough as a HERE’S THE CHORUS bit, but at other times, especially towards the end, it just seems to get in the way a bit. Obviously it needs to be there, as otherwise we wouldn’t know about the martial art lessons his parents have been paying for, but does it need to be quite so intrusive?

Tom: I don’t know, I reckon it works; it gets away with having that shout-along quality without seeming too cheesy.

Tim: You’re probably right. Finally of note, though, are the lyrics: as previously, we’ve not yet got to the romance so this is all about having fun (“Where will we go, what will be be today? BOOM KAH, BOOM BOOM KAH”), and even the rappers are joining in, encouraging him to be Batman, tracking gangs and building a hide-out.

Tom: Wait, what? Are you making that up, or is that an actual translation?

Tim: Really wish I was joking there, but no. Their last line is “Don’t worry about tomorrow, it’s important that today is cool.” Which I suppose is true.

Robin – Frontside Ollie

Tim: You know, I’m not sure if I really want to discuss this, because this is how the review starts: So, who wants to hear the Finnish version of Justin Bieber sing about skateboarding for three minutes?

Tom: It’s not the most captivating introduction you’ve ever written.

Tim: Figured. Right, we’ve now lost all but three people, but we might as write something for them to read, if they really don’t have anything better to do.

Tom: There are a lot of dislikes on that video.

Tim: Since you’re not as cool as me —

Tom: Watch it.

Tim: Face it. — I should tell you that ‘frontside ollie’ is a skateboarding term, being the thing they do where they jump in the air and spin round so they land facing the other way. Why is he singing about doing a skateboarding trick?

Tom: Could be worse. He could be singing about Olly Murs.

Tim: Well, I don’t know any Finnish, but since you’re also older than me I should tell you that’s it’s totally what we cool kids are into these days, so it’s probably because, being only 13, he’s still scared of girls so he can’t sing about them.

Tom: That’s a sign of you getting old, Tim. They grow up fast these days.

Tim: Oh, blimey, thats something I didn’t need to see in, well, any time of the day actually.

Give him his dues: he can be an actual musician, even if he can’t be bothered to learn the words to one of the most popular songs of the past year, and to be perfectly honest, if I heard this track without knowing anything about the singer I’d hear it as a song by a perfectly competent vocalist, albeit a female one.

The autotuned bit is annoying, Intense repetition of the (let’s be honest) ludicrous title considerably more so, but that aside it’s not all bad.

Tom: I pretty much agree. The sudden English skateboarding vernacular really does break you out of the song, but there’s nothing particularly wrong with it. There’s nothing particularly right with it, but, you know, well done him.

Tim: Taking all that into consideration, my advice to him is this: come back in five years when we can treat you as a respectable human and not feel too guilty writing rude things about you, and I’ll be perfectly happy.