Music Archives

Lisa Stansfield (left) and Anja Rupel (right). Both born in 1966.

I don’t know if many people have noticed, but Lisa Stansfield’s The Real Thing and Slovenian singer Anja Rupel’s Plašč ljubezni (Coat of Love) are very similar. In fact, the chorus is very much the same.

My good friend and sexy-hot local DJ Niquid masterfully spliced together both choruses so that you can hear for yourself: (Please note that the audio just alternates between the two songs — nothing else was done)

IE users or anyone else having problems playing it can download it here. (Right click, save as)

Both songs were released in 1997 but despite consulting various locals (including Slovenia’s Living Wikipedia) I couldn’t figure out which came first; or if this was a coincidence, an approved remake, or “creative borrowing.”

(Thanks Nik!)

Damjan Murko: Slovenia’s very own celebutard.

Slovenia’s legal code doesn’t have anything like Turkey’s infamous Article 301, and that’s why folks like Damjan Murko can get away with butchering the national anthem without going to jail for two to three years.

Slovenia’s anthem is an otherwise magnificent work. You can hear it here. [Right click and save as…] This may get me in trouble with some people, but I like Croatia’s anthem a bit more; at least musically. In terms of content, nothing in the world tops Slovenia’s epic Zdravljica. Have you ever listened to national anthems? They all seem to follow a similar pattern:

O, [insert country name here], you are totally beautiful,
Your [select one or more: lakes, seas, rivers, mountains, valley, parking lots] are just so awesome,
obviously much better than anywhere else,
I totally want to spill my blood all over you,
Hooray!

Compare this with Slovenia’s anthem, which:

1) Doesn’t mention Slovenia
2) Doesn’t even mention any rivers or natural wonders,
3) Calls for blessings on “all nations”,
4) Calls for freedom for all, friendship and peace.

Seriously, can anyone top that? Here is an anthem that doesn’t celebrate its host country, but celebrates our own common humanity and the noble goal of world peace. It makes me want to hug the whole world and tell it how much I love it.

But first I want to totally destroy Murko.

(Thanks Alenka!)

The Styrian national anthem?

There seemed to be a lot less activity among bloggers this week, so no Best Of today. Instead, let me just wish you all a fun and exciting weekend — like the people in the video above. May you all be as happy as they are!

These children are even singing in Serbo-Croatian. I think.

Tito died two years after this video was made. The performance itself is nearly 30 years old. And yet North Korea is still pushing out bizarro stuff like this. Go take a look at this video of three-year-old Mo Kin performing on the xylophone and you’ll see definite similarities.

I’m super enthralled with North Korea. It’s a country so far down the rabbit hole that I don’t think I will ever live long enough to see it come out. Watching videos from KCNA TV in Pyongyang, like North Korean high school girls or Dear Leader riding a horse, can only leave you feeling hopeless.

Thankfully it’s not all bad. For example, if you’ve never seen the music video Fuckin’ USA, you need to go treat yourself to it. It’s phenomenal.

The Baby Twins and Ljubezen te udari (Love hits you)

Something very unfortunate happened when the blonde bombshells of Atomik Harmonik made it big: they spawned a whole breed of cheap imitations. Just as Dr. Pepper has to contend with a slew of hastily assembled wannabes, so too are there now knock-off turbo folk groups in Slovenia desperately trying to imitate Atomik’s success. However, as is the case with photocopying, the quality steadily decreases with each new iteration.

Exhibit A is the Turbo Angels, who seemed to have copied everything down to the last detail, except that something just seems slightly odd about them. It’s almost as if they’re the result of inbreeding within Atomik Harmonik. Exhibit B: the Baby Twins, two real-life twins whose video is at the top of this page. The interesting thing about their video is that it’s currently in the top 100 of Google Video Australia, just ahead of the Crazy Frog Christmas video and the “hilarious” video of some fat lady walking on a treadmill, being all fat and stuff. (Lord, if you’re reading this, please strike down the Internet forever. kthxbye!)

The other funny thing about the Baby Twins video is this: at about 26 seconds in, the groovin’ girls (especially the one on the right) seem to struggle to find the rhythm of the song, despite there being a bone-headed beat that sounds like it was taken from The Little Mermaid Electronic Keyboard. But maybe that’s just me seeing things. Sometimes I see things that aren’t there. I think that’s the downside of being insane.

Lyrics: Angry Granny. Music: Dino Dvornik. Video: Alen, alias mraak.

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away in Croatia, someone picked up the phone and called a little old lady. Instead of saying something the caller stayed quiet. But the little old lady was no friend of silence, so she unleashed a torrent of abuse at her mute interlocutor as fearsome as an avalanche. Her finely woven tapestry of obscenity was secretly recorded, and it spread through the lands of the south Slavs, inspiring awe wherever it went.

You can listen to the original recording here: Baba na telefonu. (Grandma on the phone)

Reader rox kindly provided an English translation of her scurrilous soliloquy here:

“Hello? God fucked your mother, whoever you are, on this day. God fucked your mother, whoever you are. Your mother’s cunt, that pushed you out; watch out, the police are going to come for you. You just watch out. Don’t play with your life, God fucked your mother. I’ll send the police to you, you shitty turd.

“Hello? Who’s being quiet? God fucked his mother on this day. The devil fucked his father and mother, gracefully, his mother’s cunt, which pushed him out… damned turd. I’ll find out who’s ringing, but you’ll get fucked. I tell you honestly, I’ll send the police to you, your mother’s obnoxious cunt. Don’t let me come for you, you’ll fuck your own mother. So now you know. You damned old queer, the devil fucked your gypsy mother. Obnoxious. You shitty turd.”

Inevitably, a Croatian DJ (Dino Dvornik) set these lascivious lyrics to music. And now Alen has given the music and lyrics what they urgently needed: Clint Eastwood et al. (See video above, or click here.) It’s seriously wonderful.

(Big thanks to rox and Alen!)

Slovenian playmate turned singer Sanja Grohar: “In my dreaming.”

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this before, but for the record: If you are in a Slovenian band or performer and sing in English, I will gladly check your lyrics for free. Really. And I’m not picky or anything. I mean, the wonderful thing about English is that it’s tremendously flexible. But there’s a fine line between sounding creative and sounding like Borat, and a lot of Slovenian music acts skirt dangerously around this line.

Case in point: Sanja Grohar, a former Miss Slovenia who also appeared in a very NSFW Playboy pictorial. In the U.S., doing something like that inevitably results in you being stripped of your title, as was the case with Miss Teen USA 2003 (nsfw), and of course Miss America 1984. Recently, Miss Great Britain 2006 lost her titular privileges for pretty much the same reason. (again, nsfw)

Grohar, meanwhile, has released a single entitled “In my dreaming.” (Literally V mojem sanjanju, although the original title is Moje sanje.) Lyrically, it’s an awkward song; at one point it seems that she sings “My heart is beating for a medical sister” which is all different sorts of funny. (In Slovene, the word for “nurse” is medicinska sestra but you won’t find “medical sister” in a dictionary — only in poorly translated Soviet propaganda posters.) It’s hard to hear a lot of the lyrics, though. At one point I thought it might actually be “beating for medical assistance” which would also be very funny, but not as wrong.

Another awkward bit is “Jump in, and you will not regret” which urgently needs a direct object pronoun affixed to the end, namely “it.”

I should stress again that I’m not a grammar nazi; I just don’t get why people would put so much effort into a project without doing something as easy as having the lyrics checked. From what I understand, Ljubljana is crawling with lecherous Brits — do you really think it would be hard to find one willing to help out a young Playboy playmate?

In your dreamings!

(Thanks Martinovanje!)

An allegedly forbidden Croatian music video.

The original “Final Countdown” by Europe.

The absolute worst cover version ever.

Slovenia’s rejected entry, Mr. Nobody.

Slovenia’s humiliation continues. For the third consecutive year, Slovenia was the only one of the former Yugoslav republics not to advance into the Eurovision finals. Isn’t it time to call it quits, folks?

To be perfectly fair, Serbia & Montenegro also aren’t in the finals this year, but only because they couldn’t agree on a representative. They didn’t even compete. Apparently, an all-Montenegrin judging panel wanted to send an all-Montenegrin boy band (instead of an all-Serbian band) to Athens. Only problem: The audience at the time was full of Serbs. Another problem: They had bottles, and no qualms about launching them onto the stage. (The BBC has video of the poor boy band fleeing the stage on this page.) Of course, it’s also a very sensitive time for Serbs and Montenegrins right now, which obviously made things worse.

Anyway, the final is on Saturday. I’m really, really, really hoping that Finland wins.