Your Culture, Your People > Europe

Stop. Singing. In. English. Sing in your own language, your poetic language does not translate ideally.

Icelandic music really goes to some places, people need to go beyond Björk she's obviously the best of the mainstream pop princesses but this goes a lot deeper. Sigur Rós is a good place to start, I personally prefer their darker side like "( )" but if you like your Björkness and you're willing to go very high pitched slow paced bubblegum their more ethereal pop sounding stuff is very good as well. I don't think you understand just how adorable it is that you made up a language, Sigur Rós.

I am going to have to say, however, that I prefer the music of the more down to Earth Scandinavian countries. The vibe that hits within their IDM and minimal techno is a certain straight analytical approach to cute softness and total frozen bleakness. It isn't the same vibes as the German techno pop sounding stuff that you're thinking of, which, also you people don't look at quite properly. I mean the stuff you hear you pretty much look at properly, but once you strip vocals and self image and look right at the music... Well, now you have to escape what you've created in your head at their techno pop but it's actually a different story. I only have to bring this up because I know you want to German techno pop vibe them, Americans.

Where I really prefer the Scandinavian expression, obviously, is the post-rock and ambient, they're pretty much the kings of post-rock and ambient. Subtle, restrained... The implied obvious melancholy, but, nobody's drowning in self pity over their melancholy, but, well, obviously melancholy. Open and expansive, mellow, empty. Surreal, soft emptiness. Gentle adorable frigid bleakness.

Within the sound tapping transcendence art scene type, Scandinavia is pretty much the dominant powerhouse. All of these vibes bleed into their indie rock, there is a very distinct Scandinavian vibe and within the art scene it's pretty much the highest valued cultural expression for a reason. A lot of the people who think they get it don't get it, they think they're listening to cute music. It's more complicated than cute music.

You only know them for their black metal, you think Scandinavian's are just a bunch of metal heads. They're all angry sad at the cold or something. Not exactly, you don't understand the mindset of the cold. No they're not escaping the cold, no, you know there's no escape, you've submitted there's no escape, now you're just entirely detached to this kind of thing. Now the music that sounds like angry at the cold is actually just blissful emptiness, this is hitting you and it means nothing to you it's just a sensory haze zap. It's not the same as a head banging American.

It's evil fascist detachment, it's not your cute little from hell metal it's a much more frightening from hell metal. Doesn't mean it doesn't go silly metal head lyrics that you simply cannot take seriously, just, the vibes are different than you think they are. No I do not respect the bulk of Scandinavian black metal, but, it has it's moments.