A young vocalist, poet, musician, and songwriter from Bergen, the most beautiful city in Norway. His music is marked by, quite common for people from the west region here, the burr (skarre-r in Norwegian). If you want to know what exactly is this burr, you need to check out his music.
He debuted in 2009 with his (in my opinion) best album, For Sant Til Å Være Godt. He started the career with Gjengen, and they played a mixture of pop, rock, soul, and punk which they called themselves “street pop”. My all-time favorite is Diamanter Og Kirsebær (Diamonds and Cherries), which made me discover this artist. Actually, the story of me finding this song is quite weird. I was sitting in a pub, enjoying the night when it suddenly played. No one around me knew who’s the artist so I just recorded it. I spent almost one hour, trying to figure out the title and words! Norwegian isn’t always as easy as it may seem.
Next album Det nærmeste du kommer came out in 2011, but isn’t less interesting than the previous one. It has a more rock-ish vibe to it, but I still appreciate it.
The last album with Gjengen, Den eneste veien ut, came out in 2012. It’s definitely more experimental from both previous ones so not everyone may like it. But in my opinion, it’s still good.
He started the band John Olav Nilsen & Nordsjøen in 2016 and is said to belong to the genre called motstands-pop which can translate to something like anti-pop. Their first album, Nordsjøen, came out in 2017, which is quite recently. Besides they also created a live record John Olav + Victoria (Live fra Victoria) in 2018. I hope to see more of them!
Hope you guys like this little music post. I haven’t posted anything music-related in a while, so this should be a recompensation. I know myself how hard is it to find good Norwegian music when you already went through all the classics. Also, don’t even start me on Olav’s Bergen accent. I love it so much.
Have a great week everyone!
againorway 