Wow, as something of a self-proclaimed representative of Sweden here on Kos (being half-Swedish), as well as a Colbert fan (aren't we all?). So it's slightly embarassing that I missed that Colbert had interviewed and featured the Swedish swing/jazz/rap(!) band Movits! last Monday.
That caused their album to make a huge jump up the Amazon charts and Colbert, true to form, naturally credited himself profusely. He deserves every bit of it - Seeing a Swedish or foreign band on American TV is rare enough; seeing one performing in Swedish is practically unheard of. (add to this that I'm also an advocate of getting people to listen to music in foreign languages; I do it myself and feel you miss out on a lot if you don't)
So I got the album and listened through it and thought I'd do a short review. So if you missed it and want to find out what it was all about, or if you caught it and are curious to know more..
So, without further ado, here's the official video for their single (and album title-track) Äppelknyckarjazz (apple-stealer jazz):
(And the video for the song they did on Colbert)
My first reaction was that it's a pretty dang catchy song for sure, and the idea of mixing rap-type vocals over swing music actually works surprisingly well. My second reaction was that they're pretty clever; the band name "Movits!" naturally references the expression "move it", but also Movitz, who was a character mentioned in the songs of the Swedish 18th century bard Bellman, which may sound obscure but is in fact a cultural reference most Swedes would 'get'. Their album track "Epistel No 1" is also a Bellman reference (he called many of his songs "epistles"), and it's musically a jazzed-up Bellman-esque melody.
(Apparently they chose the 's' ending instead of 'z' because many Swedish "dansband" bands do the opposite, and they didn't want to be mistaken for one.)
I'm a bit surprised to see a Swedish band playing swing, but less surprised to see them gain some success in America. We're more nostalgic than Swedes (Europeans even) - the brief late-90's swing-revival thing didn't resonate there at all. (neither did the Chrysler PT Cruiser or the TV series 'Happy days' or..) Maybe it's because they have a longer history; I dunno.
That said, after listening to their album I think it'd be unfair to characterize them as a swing band; Only a couple of the songs are swing, the rest span a bigger range of styles, with influences ranging from Bellman as mentioned, to romanian/gypsy and Django Reinhardt-style gypsy jazz, to Bo Kaspers Orkester (a very popular Swedish jazz-pop band). It's a good thing, since I personally find swing to get a bit tedious in large doses.
It was ironic that Colbert asked them about Sweden being 'socalist', since as it turns out - the band would probably say Sweden's not socialist enough. Although it no doubt is flying over the heads' of their newfound American audience, their lyrics are intensely political (and left-wing). For instance, some of the lyrics from Äppelknyckarjazz:
Direktörerna lever fett, och tjänar mer i lön än hela min släkt
Så nånting måste va’ snett, jag måste stjäla äpplen för att hålla mig mätt
Jag vill ju göra rätt, men länsman jagar mig med batong och häst
Säg mig, är det bättre, att råna folk med banker och höga räntor?
Translated without regard for rhyme or meter, he's saying:
The executives live in riches and make more money than my entire family
So something's got to be wrong, I have to steal apples to stay fed
I want to do the right thing, but the police chase me with batons and horses
Tell me, is it better to rob people with banks and high interest rates?
Most of the rest of their songs are equally political if not more so. Like, "Swing för hyresgästföreningen" (Swing for the tenants association) and "A-kasseblues" (~On the dole blues). And the lyrics reference everything from George Bush to prescription drug subsidies. They'd have fit well in with the 1970's Swedish Progg movement.
There's some clever linguistic subtlety going on as well: It's not just a 40's style song, the lyrics here use 30's-40's style Swedish. E.g. the word "länsman" for 'police', which nobody there's used since 1950 or so.
Overall I found it to be a pretty good album though. And I'd likely have thought the same even if I didn't understand the lyrics. I'm guessing this unexpected US success may well lead them to do their next album in English, although that may well require them to abandon their rather local themes. The American market/record companies don't take as well to highly political music either.
Did you know the 80's hit "99 Red Balloons" was anti-Cold War song? Not in its English version it wasn't.