Travelle – “Fake Louis V.”.

   Hiya people! 🙂 

   Today I’d like to share with you another song by the Norwegian singer, songwriter and producer Travelle, whom both my Mum and me have been liking for quite some time and a lot of whose songs I’ve already shared on here, including a couple others which he released under the name Trollguten. This one, as is very clear from the lyrics, deals with the topic of the “fake it ’til you make it” philosophy. As he explained it for one Norwegian music blog, he actually did it at some point and bought a bunch of fake designer clothes to look cooler, but didn’t actually end up using them. He claims that whether it is buying followers on Instagram, embellishing your CV with things that aren’t necessarily true about you, or lying about how many people you’ve slept with, that’s not really a stupid idea, and that’s the point of this song. While I can agree that this can be sometimes helpful, I can’t say I agree with that. I mean, as someone with AVPD, I can sure get it that people can do such things as a way not to be criticised, but despite my AVPD, I’d sort of feel like I was untrue to myself if I bought fake clothes just because I wanted to look good for other people. If I wanted that for myself, I’d rather focus on creating my own style that would reflect my personality and work for my budget, and if I really did want designer clothes, I’d do all I could to actually one day be able to afford the genuine stuff. I just couldn’t be bothered to buy fake things for the sake of other people I think, but I guess I’m in the minority here because  I’m a hermit so I don’t have to care about such things, and for most people, especially those who are actually ambitious or something, the social pressure is probably a lot stronger, I see it even with our Sofi who fakes a lot of things for her peers’ sake. Similarly with wanting to have lots of followers and stuff like that, I’m totally disinterested in it, in fact I think it’s kind of nicer to have less followers because you can actually know all these people and have more genuine contact with them than with a whole crowd of followers. That’s especially true with blogging for me, I don’t think I’d like to have a huge blog with loads of followers, because it would no longer feel so nice and cosy and stuff and would probably start to feel a bit overwhelming if I wanted to keep up with engaging with all those followers. But then I don’t use your normal social media much at all and they have a bit of a different dynamic than blogging obviously. But, despite I don’t fully agree with his point, I like how he’s honest about it like that in this song, and I’m pretty sure it must be relatable for a lot of people these days, plagued with FOMO and other such difficulties that we’re having in the world these days. 

Travelle – “Small Talk”.

   Thought I’d share another song by Travelle  – the Norwegian electropop singer, songwriter and producer several of whose songs I’ve already shared before. – Like all of his songs, I think this one may be very relatable for people. It definitely is to me, as an introvert and sociophobic and hermit who really dislikes small talk. Although I cannot really relate to it in its entirety, because it seems like what he describes is more the “I-don’t-care-about-people” type of dislike for small talk, rather than, as it is in my case, because it’s really awkward and kind of stressful. I think people are actually very interesting and I usually don’t mind if someone randomly wants to share some details of their life with me, perhaps they really need it and I just happen to be the closest, and I’m okay with it as long as they don’t do that excessively, in a way that screams that they’re really self-absorbed, and don’t expect me to do the same just because it’s a rule, or don’t expect me to actually lead the conversation. But overall, yeah, it can be super draining and overwhelming. 

Travelle – “Vacation”.

   Hey people! 🙂 

   We had some really warm and sunny weather over here for a while earlier this week, and when I was planning what to share with you in this song of the day series in the near future, I thought this song would be very fitting, with the weather that could possibly be making many people  think of taking a vacation already, but at the same time it not being the season for that just yet. Our Sofi definitely can’t wait for holidays but the harsh truth is that she’s actually going to have her exams this week, and there’s still a whole month of school ahead of her. But, as we all know, weather can change super quickly and, since yesterday, it’s actually been rather unpleasant outside, with loads of rain and cold winds and clouds. Not so vacation-like anymore. Nevertheless, I’m sharing this summery song with you anyway. It’s still fitting. This song is about being burnt out and wanting to disappear for a while, which I think are feelings that for some people might be even stronger when it’s yucky outside, or it might be totally unrelated to whatever the weather is like. Fromm what Travelle told Universal Music Norway, he wrote this when he was feeling a bit tired and dejected, when there was still ice and snow on the streets, and he had no winter shoes so he got soaked up on his way to the studio. So I think this may be quite a relatable song for many people. I myself am in such luxurious situation that I rarely feel this way these days, because I am largely in charge of my own time and have a job that isn’t particularly stressful or demanding, but I know the feeling very well from school, particularly the first and last weeks of every school year, which I’m sure is also a very common experience. 

Travelle ft. Bad Habits – “Wasted On You”.

   Hey people! 🙂 

   So as you probably remember if you read my yesterday’s post I said I’m going to focus on pop that has something to do with Norway this week, well, until Friday I think but we’ll see. And for today, it’s electropop more exactly, and I chose to share with you a song from a musician who has been quite a regular guest on my blog lately, and whom both my Mum and me like, that is Kristoffer Björntvedt, aka Travelle (or Trollguten or some other things as well, but I’m mostly sharing his Travelle music). This song was written and produced by him in collaboration with Bad Habits, and as far as I can tell based on my little research, Bad Habits is also a project of his, together with a guy called Adrian Eriksen, and they’ve also released several other singles as Bad Habits, although I guess Bad Habits is also the stage name that Adrian uses for his own music. They went to school together and, according to what Travelle told Universal Music (which is the label to which he has been signed to under this particular stage name) they both have differing approaches to production and music in general so they decided to  create something together. It is certainly interesting when two very different people make music with each other, although I don’t really know Adrian’s own music so I can’t really see much of where these differences show, and it also must be very challenging and require a lot of compromises, or so I’d imagine. This song, as you’ll likely be able to figure out, is about a really strong and obsessive type of infatuation or crush or something like that. Sounds very all-consuming to me, and I’m sure that it must be very relatable for many people, even is to me to a degree where my faza peeps are concerned, because while my fazas don’t really involve love, they can also be a bit obsessive and during a faza peak it can make you feel really high and the feeling, as well as my faza peeps themselves, are very addictive lol. 

Song of the day (22nd February – “Travelle – “Nobody Else”.

   Hey people! 🙂 

   Time for yet another song from the Norwegian musician Travelle, aka Kristoffer Björntvedt, Taka rollguten etc. This time round, it’s his debut single, at least debut under this particular stage name. I read that it was quite a success in America, which I found surprising given that his later Travelle music doesn’t seem to enjoy a lot of attention outside Norway, which is quite a pity imo. While his later releases as Travelle were created largely single-handedly by him, this song was a collaborative effort of his and an Australian, London-based artist called Tonino Speciale, plus a vocalist though I don’t know who she is. Again, as with the song Diving which I shared a couple months ago, it shows that it’s not him who is (or at least not solely) behind the lyrics of this song, as he’s quite characteristical in this respect and I like it because I really like when someone can treat their lyrics with a bit of distance, yet at the same time very personally. But I still quite like these lyrics here because while they’re about a relationship, which is something most people write their songs about and something I can’t really overly relate to, it’s not very cliche, and I think the song is nice overall.

   Oh, and actually, speaking of Travelle, an interesting thing is that last month my Mum has also become a fan of his music! I totally didn’t see it coming! 😀 One night when my Dad had a particularly loud episode of sleep apnea she was sleeping on a matress in my room, and I had my blog playlist from this year playing on Spotify, and since last month I posted his song “Cuba” on here it was on that playlist as well, and it played at some point during the night and then in the morning my Mum was like: “You had suchh a super cool song playing here at night, I wish I knew what it was!” So I sent her that playlist so she could find what song it was that she liked so much, and to my surprise, it turned out to be Travelle’s “Cuba”. Actually perhaps I shouldn’t have been so surprised because my Mum likes a lot of electronic music which she listens to when she goes running, in fact she most likely listens more to this genre than I do because for me folk rules obviously, but somehow I woouldn’t have thought that this is the shade of electronic music that my Mum would also be into. Yet, she ended up liking all of Travelle’s music, so that’s really cool! 🙂 She was bummed though when I told her that it’s not likely that he’ll be doing more music as Travelle, as he hasn’t in quite a while and is now focusing on yet another, quite different shade of electronic music which I totally don’t feel and I’m absolutely sure neither would my Mum lol, but which clearly gets a lot more love from people inn general. 😀 

Travelle – “Video Games”.

Hey people! 🙂

I thought today I’d share another song from this Norwegian singer, songwriter and producer with you all. I know diddly squat about video games, simply because I never really play them. In fact, I hardly play any games at all, not because I don’t like it overall or because I have some weird rules that I never do it like some people apparently do, it’s simply because there aren’t as many games that are accessible for the blind, and out of those that are, few have managed to really spark my enthusiasm, and even fewer kept me interested long-term. Yet, on some level, I do find this song relatable, because even though I don’t play video games, I do a lot of other things that I’m hooked on, just like it seems to be the case with him and video games, and which I use as a substitute for peopling a lot of the time, and I much prefer peopling online. Except for me this is a chronic state, which doesn’t seem to be the case for Travelle, because from what we can figure out from the song itself and from what I read about it, it was more of a transition period for him, when he moved from his hometown (he’s from somewhere in Rogaland) to Oslo, where he didn’t know any people and had no one to hang out with so he preferred hanging out online with people he knew. It’s certainly always quite a major change in one’s life to move from a smaller place to a city where you don’t really know many people. Also, like I already wrote about Travelle in my previous posts where I shared some of his music, I like how he seems very candid about things, I like candid, genuine-sounding lyrics which let you see a glimpse of a person behind them because people as individuals are interesting most of the time. And it’s always refreshing to hear a song that isn’t about love or sex. 😀

Travelle – “Phone Dating”.

Hi guys! 🙂

For the last few months, I’ve been sharing with you some music from the Norwegian singer, songwriter and producer Travelle, and today it’s time for another song by him. As you can easily figure out from the lyrics, this song deals with the topic of Tinder dating, and how shallow it is. As much as this is difficult to comprehend for some people, I have never, ever dated and have no real desire to do it just for the sake of it, so I don’t really find it very personally relatable as such, also this is obviously from a guy’s perspective, but I think it shows well what it must feel like and how difficult and frustrating it must be and I like how authentic this song feels.

Song of the day (22nd October) – Travelle – “Diving”.

Hey people! 🙂

Let’s listen to another song from the Norwegian singer, songwriter and producer Travelle. Last month I shared his song called

Sweden,

and earlier also two of his songs that he released under the name of Trollguten –

Pell Deg Ut

and

Skogen.

Since I found Travelle very interesting when I discovered his music, I’ve analysed it a fair bit as I always do with interesting artists, and it struck me a bit how the lyrics to this song feel so different in a way compared to most of his other Travelle songs. I wouldn’t be able to say exactly why or put my finger on it but these particular lyrics just have a bit of a different style and look like someone else might have written them. I’d say these lyrics are kind of more sophisticated, for lack of a better word. And then later on I learned that this is actually the case indeed, because the lyrics to this song have been written not by Travelle himself, but by Grammy-winning songwriter who has apparently worked with a lot of famous and successful artist – Paul E. Phamous. – That makes sense, and makes me proud of my analytical skills. 😀 Travelle has described the song as “simple and shy”, and it clearly is both of these things indeed. I really like it.

Travelle – “Sweden”.

Hiya people! 🙂

In the last couple months, I've shared with you a few songs from the Norwegian singer, songwriter and producer Trollguten. I've also mentioned that he's also been more or less known under several other aliases, one of them being Travelle and that I'd like to share with you some music that he's made under this name as well because I actually like it even though I don't really often listen to stuff like this in general. So I figured I'd finally share something by Travelle today. He achieved some popularity  (apparently to some degree in the US) with his debut single Nobody Else in 2016 and since then had been quite prolific until like 2018, but as we haven't heard from him as Travelle since that year I suppose in the end he must have decided that he'd rather focus more on his more cheesy, russ music activity, as he's become popular as russ musician under a different name around the same time,  and his russ stuff is way more popular with his fellow Scandinavians as it seems which is rather sad imo, I'm always saddened to see talented folks wasting their skills. 

Like with his early activity as Trollguten, I like his Travelle music because it feels very genuine. I really like music where you can actually get the idea of the mind and the person behind it and that's what I feel is the case here. And despite, or actually perhaps because of, his lyrics often seeming quite personal and even quite a bit raw sometimes, I guess they still have a lot of potential for being relatable for people and some are even for me. They draw one's attention and they sound very direct and candid. 
The song by him that I want to share today is all about Sweden, so it's little wonder that it drew my attention. 😀 More exactly, it's about shopping in Sweden, from a Norwegian perspective. You may or may not know that life is generally quite pricey in Norway, particularly, as far as I’m aware, stuff like groceries, not to mention alcohol which is heavily taxed. As a result, a lot of Norwegians travel to Sweden to get groceries and all sorts of drugs fand stuff used for gradual, hedonistic self-destruction of human beings, om booze to snuss (the Scandi snuff) to chocolate at cheaper prices. The phenomenon is widely known as Harrytur (Harry trip) in Norway. Every nation has such names that are very strongly linked to some stereotype, like Karen is in the US these days. That's the case with Harry in Norway. So the Norwegian Harry is I believe typically  a middle-aged guy, although I suppose age doesn't really play much of a role here, what's more important is that he's rather unsophisticated and, among other things perceived as unclassy that he does, drives grocery shopping to Sweden. It can also be used as an adjective so you could say that Norwegians shopping in Sweden are very Harry. The female equivalent is apparently Doris, and obviously as a name nerd when I first learned about these Norwegian stereotypes some years ago I was curious why Harry and Doris. Turns out that, just like I believe was the case in Sweden, in 1920’s, Norwegian lower-class parents would give their kids English names, which distinguished them from their upper-class peers whose parents preferred to stick with all the classic slike Ole and Sven. So the upper-class kids called the lower-class kids Harry, kind of collectively I guess. 

When I first heard this song it seriously made me laugh, I like how graphic it is that you can actually imagine the whole thing vividly and I like its humorous feel.

Trollguten – “Pell Deg Ut”.

Hiya people! 🙂

So last month I have already shared

one song

from this young and quite surprising Norwegian artist with you, and I was intending on sharing some more of his music, so that’s what I’d like to do today, as, in my humble opinion, the music that he’s made that is actually good is really underrated compared with how much attention his less ambitious stuff seems to be getting in Scandinavia.

This song, just like the previous one from him I shared with you, has interesting and kind of weird lyrics. I like weird, creative and genuine. As you may know, lately I’ve been playing around a little with Norwegian and I find it fascinating how this language has such a load of dialects and how cool it is that people don’t have this kind of shame about speaking them as some other nationalities with a lot of dialects often have. He wrote his lyrics under this particular stage name in what I believe is the Stavanger dialect or something similar from the southwestern Norway, and I was able to pick up bits and pieces of this song via my Swedish and some knowledge I’ve recently gained in Norwegian, so I had a basic idea of what it’s about, but I decided to sit with it before writing this post and try to figure out as much as I could from these lyrics when seeing them in writing so I could give y’all some idea. I didn’t understand everything, but here’s what I gather from it. He/the lyrical subject addresses some girl who lives in his house, presumably renting or something like that, who sounds like one huge disgusting nightmare to share your living space with. She eats and drinks like a pig, leaves crumbs of food on his sofa, doesn’t flush the loo, carelessly sits on his guitar, doesn’t pay rent and seems to be a real fart factory or potentially shitting herself ’cause that’s how bad it apparently smells, and it sounds like some default state for her to smell of sweat and poop. Ew! It sounds like a super weird arrangement if you ask me because she not only lives in his house essentially for free, but he also cleans up all her mess and even makes food for her! :O And she won’t even say thank you. It’s not surprising, given all that, that finally the lyrical subject had enough of it and decided it’s time to kick her out. So he told her to pack her bags and beat it. Except when she did pack her bags, he discovered that half of the tings she packed were actually his.

As an introvert who hates parasite people and considers my private space extremely important, this sounds like quite a hell for me to put up with, even though at least I don’t practically have much sense of smell.

Oddly enough, despite I think I understand quite a fair bit of it (which I consider great since it’s a dialect and not standard Norwegian and since I don’t actually speak Norwegian as such), I have no idea what the title means literally. I mean I can guess it’s something like get out of here or something, but I don’t know what the verb “pell” (which is probably pelle in the infinitive) means exactly.

Trollguten – “Skogen” (The Forest).

Hiya people! 🙂

For today I thought I’d share with you one of my recent discoveries when it comes to Norwegian music, which I’ve found very interesting. Even though I don’t speak or learn Norwegian as such, only Swedish, I do seem to feel some kind of affinity with Norwegian music, and a lot of that music happens to be somewhere on the electronic music spectrum. This also is the case with this artist.

Trollguten (which means the troll boy in English) is Norwegian producer and singer-songwriter Kristoffer Björntvedt (or maybe it’s with the Norwegian ø, I’m not sure as I’ve seen both spellings), who has also made music under quite a few other aliases, playing around with different kinds of electronic music, from electro pop to what they call russ music in Norway which is like a dance subgenre I guess we could say, often with easy-cheesy, cringey or downright obscene lyrics, particularly associated with russefeiring, or russ celebration, that is when high school pupils (russ) are in their last semester of school and celebrate the fact that they’re finishing high school and are now adults so they can drink and apparently often do a lot during that time, but from what I understand it’s also just generally party music, regardless whether you’re a russ or not.

I’m not going to mention all the different names/alter egos/whatchamacallit he’s known as, because with at least one of them (the one that’s most successful and under which he makes the aforementioned russ music) he’s anonymous and doesn’t want people to know who he is. Actually, I wonder if it isn’t a bit of a Pulcinella’s secret because, while I myself happened to come across his less well-known music projects first (which is very fortunate because otherwise I’d probably not be encouraged to delve deeper), there seem to be a lot of people in the interwebs who know only this russ music activity of his, and are wondering who he is, and it doesn’t require any special detective skills to figure that out, there’s even a thread about him on what seems to be a pretty popular Swedish forum. Still, I believe privacy is a crucially important thing so I’m not gonna reveal the secret. 😀 I suppose if any young Norwegian/Swedish folks, will be reading this, they’ll guess whom I’m talking about anyway. Also if I wrote the sort of lyrics he does under that particular pseudonym I think I’d also much prefer to stay anonymous, hahah, although for him it’s apparently not this that’s the reason.

Anyways, the first project of his that I’ve heard of, about a month ago, and that also took off quite well in his country as it seems, was Travelle, and I liked it a lot immediately. It’s maybe not what I’d typically listen to, even when it comes to electronic music, but something about it really spoke to me, and also I really like when people are raw and real with their music like that, expressive but without being overly exalted. And then I learned about his other musical activity, and even though definitely not all of his music spoke to me, I really liked his versatility, I always like that in people, whether it’s in music or whatever other area. And I like it when people who do music solo do everything themselves, as then you can get quite a consistent picture of the mind behind it. Another thing that I always appreciate in musicians that he also is is that he’s really prolific. Sadly, the project he’s most prolific in is that russ one, and he hasn’t done anything as Trollguten in ages, and nothing new as Travelle in couple years either, but I suppose he invests himself most in the russ stuff because it’s simply what people want the most, and so it pays off the most, as he hasn’t got quite as much attention with all the other stuff as with that.

And then I also happened to learn that not only does he make music in Norwegian, Swedish and English, but he also apparently loves languages and can speak German and Spanish. Somehow I would never have thought that this could be the case. Moreover, he tends to speak in quite a peculiar mix of Swedish, Norwegian and English from what I’ve noticed. Mixing languages is fun! And I think it must be all the more fun when you live in a country where people can actually understand you when you do so. 😀 I wish I could do that, but everyone around me is monoglot and they’d think I’ve gone even more crazy than ever. On the other hand, I always used to mix up languages spontaneously and involuntarily when I still used to drink alcohol, so maybe it has this sort of effect on him as well.

I think I might share some of his Travelle music in the future as well, but since Trollguten was an earlier thing and it’s also really really good, I thought we’d listen to this first. He’s originally from near Stavanger in the southwest of Norway, although is currently based in Oslo, and as Trollguten, he sang his lyrics in the Stavanger dialect.

I’m not good at understanding Norwegian by ear, and even looking at the lyrics I don’t get everything so wouldn’t be able to translate it for you, but from what I gather, he/the lyrical subject’s on some trip in the forest with a girl, that would have been nice, except she’s being in a quarrelsome mood or something like that, and wants to leave him, so he’s trying to convince her how bad an idea it is, because they’re deep in the forest and because she’s afraid of the dark, and allergic to birch, on top of that.