Tag: Ulrik Munther

Saturday Reject: Ulrik Munther – Soldiers

Blimey, when that kicks in, it kicks in hard.

Tim: Unlike Lisa Miskovsky a couple of weeks back, here you can hear Ulrik playing his instruments, and then coming third. With quite a good song.

Tom: Blimey, when that kicks in, it kicks in hard. Put the drummer on a stand, and make him work for his pay.

Tim: Now, I really like this, despite a lot of reasons not to – the melody’s not much more than average, the hate and sleeveless top make him look like a bit of a bell-end and the hands-free harmonica sort of makes me want to slap his ‘look at what I can do’ attitude.

Tom: Agreed on all points.

Tim: But on the other hand, the drumming in the background adds a lot to the song, that harmonica sounds great even if it looks silly, and the vocal’s pretty great as well. So really, the best thing for me to do is listen to this but not watch it. Which, of course, would make this a terrible type of song to send to Eurovision.

Tom: I do wonder how many Eurovisions would have turned out differently if they’d been purely on the radio.

Tim: Well, Lordi can kiss goodbye to their victory for a start. And a hell of a lot of wind-machine manufacturers would go out of business.

Ulrik Munther – Boys Don’t Cry

A harmonica and a flat cap… and puberty.

Tim: Here’s a kid that looks about fourteen, which is probably because he is about fourteen.

Tom: He sounds about twelve.

Tim: Anyway, possibly due to recent playground bullying he has discovered that boys shouldn’t cry, and has decided to write a song about that.

Tom: Oh no.

Tom: I know we’ve established that I’m getting old, but I’m officially classifying this under the “get off my lawn” department. It’s like a teenager whining about how they’ll never love anyone again after a breakup. Yes you will, billions of people have done it before you, get over it.

Tim: Musically, it isn’t bad. It’s a bit dull to start with, and I got a bit bored and moved onto other things, but a couple of minutes later I realised that was I was vaguely listening to was actually alright, so I decided to be charitable and give it a second chance. And yes, it’s still a bit boring at the start, but it does pick up eventually into something quite good, and that I wouldn’t mind listening to a few times.

Tom: It’s a bit bizarre, isn’t it? A harmonica and a flat cap almost make up for the fact he’s still going through puberty. If it wasn’t for the lyrics, I’d really like the last minute of this. Only the last minute of it, though.

Tim: It really ought to go without saying, though, that taking two minutes to make a three minute song sound decent is Just Not On. Sorry, Ulrich, but you’ll need to do better next time if you want to pass your music whatever-the-Swedish-version-of-GCSE-is.