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Bomfunk MC's Finnish brand of electro-hip-hop finds fans from Greece to Belgium
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Finland, land of reindeer and cell phones, has a surprising new export: pop music. It all started with Bomfunk MC's single Freestyler, an infectious fusion of hip-hop rhymes and chemical beats that went to top of the pops in 10 countries. Then came HIM, a five-piece band that took Germany's top slot with Join Me, a bittersweet rock anthem. And last summer dance artist Darude wowed the U.K. and Ibiza with the energetic trance of his debut track, Sandstorm. "When we made [Freestyler] we knew it was something special," says B.O.W., Bomfunk MC's rapper and the unofficial voice of Finnish dance music. "But we didn't know it was gonna be a monster hit."
Finnpop has, in fact, been a monster rocking across Europe in genres as diverse as love metal and trance. Clubbers throughout the continent are dancing to the beat of a different drum, one with a distinctly Finnish rhythm. Freestyler notched up number ones from Greece to Belgium, with Join Me selling 430,000 copies in Germany and Sandstorm just under 400,000 in the U.K. "It's not a flash in the pan," says Hans Hagman, head of music for mtv Northern Europe. "We're talking a new opening for a country producing domestic and international music."
It hasn't always been so. Aside from Hanoi Rocks, the wild glam-rock group of the early 1980s, Finland has failed to produce acts to rival Sweden's steady stream of pop successes, like ABBA and Ace of Base, or those bad boys of Britpop, Oasis. "Finland is a very strange market," says Nick Triani, the English producer of the cult punk-rock band Apulanta. "There's this Finnish sound — a Slavic, melancholy kind of thing. It's very popular."
Popular now, but traditionally Finnish bands have found their most ardent fans within the Suomi borders. Local artists hold their own against imports, with 41% of the market, a figure more typical of big music producers like Germany than small European countries.
But Finnish bands didn't necessarily benefit from the music industry's introverted attitudes. When Niko Nordström, now general manager for BMG Music Publishing Finland, joined the business 10 years ago, "the atmosphere didn't support bands [singing in] English."
Toni Wirtanen, Apulanta's singer and something of a Finnish counterculture folk hero, had different ideas. When the group burst into the Finnish charts back in the early 1990s, the three band members and a group of friends did everything themselves, producing, marketing and distributing their own CDs on their own independent label. Why? "The music scene was dead," says Wirtanen. The gamble paid off: since they started, Apulanta has spent a total of 43 weeks at No. 1 in the Finnish charts.
The arrival of mtv Nordic in 1998 also changed the pop music game in Finland. The channel has been a kind of launching pad for northern bands, promoting new talent and enabling acts to reach audiences farther south. HIM is one band that benefited from the northern exposure, both on mtv and German music channel viva zwei.
HIM's music is an unusual mix of pop melodies, hard guitar and English lyrics. And the band's frontman, Ville Valo, is heavy on the enigma, the eyeliner and the adolescent angst. Valo put the romance back into Finnish rock, packing HIM gigs with screaming girls as well as hard-core heavy metal fans. When BMG Finland's Asko Kallonen first heard HIM's "combination of romance and danger" in a demo tape, he signed them up and started pushing them in Finland and Germany. "They have been raised on mtv, rock radio and star culture," says Kallonen. "They see pop music as a career."
For HIM, pop stardom has been a lucrative career, indeed. Their second album, Razorblade Romance, has so far sold 750,000 copies across Europe. "Video channels are the marketing tools," says HIM's Manager Seppo Vesterinen. But the band has also been quick to capitalize on the marketing potential of the Internet. HIM's website has established itself as a forum for the fans to share news and views about the band. Darude was teleported out of Finland through the Net. The U.K. label Neo Records signed the 24-year-old after downloading an MP3 track from his website.
There's so much buzz around Finnpop that the hunt is on for fresh talent. Independent label Spinefarm Records was prepared to invest heavily in its discovery, the singer Tuula and her radio-friendly pop potential, even though she'd never released a single. EMI has set up a new dance label and recruited promising dance act Campaus. "There's definitely going to be a big fight for the talent," says Spinefarm's founder Riku Pääkkönen. "Everybody wants to show that we can do it."
If the Finns can do it, they're likely to do it in Finland first. Join Me and Sandstorm both topped the Finnish charts before doing so elsewhere in Europe. Though a commercial smash in Finland may not guarantee success on the international market, the Finnish music industry hopes that bands like Bomfunk MC's and HIM will make the rest of Europe — and the world — give Finnpop a second listen. "We have the audience, the bands, the producers," says Kallonen. "We have all the infrastructure we need to make international records."
So who may be the next big thing? According to Ville Vilen, head of music at national pop station Radiomafia in Helsinki, rock bands The Crash, Kemopetrol and Lemonator have a shot at going global. If pop's your thing, try Place-2-Go. Want more? Check out electro-hip-hop act Giant Robot. "These musicians seem to think they can make it," says Vilen. Listen up Europe. Here come the Finns.
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