Danish music lovers: we need your help. So badly, that for the first time in the history of this blog, we are posting in English.
Some things just taste better in their country of origin. Guinness is best consumed in Ireland and don’t even try eating gazpacho outside of Spain. It just doesn’t taste the same.
The same goes for music. That is why the most fun in preparing for a vacation is to compile a playlist of local music for the road. Two years ago, before our first trip to Vammen camping in Denmark (where campers have live jam sessions every night!) I first started gathering Danish songs.
It wasn’t easy. A CD-R can contain up to around 18 songs and the rule of thumb is to include a maximum of two songs per artist. Saybia got an exception and got included three times. Aqua was only allowed once (the kids forced me). From my own memory, I couldn’t think of more than 10 different songs.
I had to turn to my friends on Twitter for some additional input, which resulted in the following playlist:
Agnes Obel and Alphabeat came to mind quite naturally. Junior Senior and The Asteroids Galaxy Tour: I never knew they were Danish. Outlandish I had almost forgotten. And this Tim Christensen, how come I had never heard of that man before? What a fabulous songwriter! A bit cheesy admittedly, but nonetheless a gap in my musical library.
So the lesson is that it turned out to be quite a challenge to come up with one cd full of popular Danish songs. That made me wonder how well the Danish would be aware of the Dutch music scene. Our record industry wants us to believe that some of our artists are famous all over the world, but I have always doubted that claim. Whenever I talk to music lovers from abroad they surprisingly suck at recalling more than one or two Dutch songs (without help).
So, here’s a question for our Danish friends: name any artist or song from the Netherlands that comes to mind in the comments.
There is one rule: you can’t ask Google or your friends.
Ok, I mostly know the Danish music because of my 7 year old ?, but here comes some artists, Danish, whom we like: Kim Larsen ( beetje Huub van der Lubben, de dijk), Lucas Graham, Søren Huss (specially ‘…hvorfor’ from his album ‘troen og ingen’), medina (?), Rasmus Seebach, Marie Key (love her!).
If you want more, let me know ?.
Hilsen fra Danmark, Harmke
When looking in my Spotify playlist I have “1, 2, 3” with Lil’ Kleine and Ronnie Flex which had some FM airtime this spring in Denmark. Otherwise when thinking about Dutch music I think of some of the great dance music/DJ’s e.g. the original track “Freeloader”.
Anne Linnet, Lars Lilholt are good artists too.