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.
My Inner MishMash 