It's Thanksgiving time and I work in the grocery business...and that'll have to do for the excuse as to why this one is a week and a day late....
This week's tune is another in a long line of songs sent to me by my darling daughter on one of her mix CDs, and I instantly fell in love with it. As an added bonus, flash forward about twenty years when I found the full CD for this week's song for a dollar at a library sale, and it turned out to be a hell of an album. One song, two wins--thanks, darling daughter!
Peter Bjorn and John (taken from the first names of the three band members, who apparently don't believe in commas) formed in Sweden in 1999 and originally played for their own amusement. Somewhere along the way they must have realized that they had more than a little talent, because their playing for fun turned into a twenty-five-year career that's still going. As is sometimes the case here at Friday Night Jukebox, their career history isn't all that interesting so I'm just going to cut to the chase. For their career, Peter Bjorn and John have released nine studio albums (only three of which have charted), nine EPs. and twenty-two singles (only one of which charted, for all intents and purposes). Despite the modicum of commercial success (they have had a fair amount of critical success), kudos to them for turning it into a quarter of a century of getting to play music for a living.
"Young Folks" was the first single from their 2006 album, the rather obstructingly named Writer's Block. The song was the only single of their career to chart, reaching #13 in the U.K. and #110 (with a weak ass bullet!) on the Billboard Hot 100. The album was their most commercially successful, reaching, ahem, #68 in Great Britain and #155 on the Billboard 200, which, to be fair, were considerably higher charting than any album I ever released.
Fun Fact: The song is known for the whistling that it begins with (Rolling Stone put it in their list of the fifteen best whistling songs), but the whistle originally was just a temporary fill in for another instrument. Such is fate!
Essentially, "Young Folks" is a duet between Peter (Moren) and Victoria Bergsman of The Concretes (he writes, as if he has any idea who The Concretes are). And what a duet it is--wonderful harmonies and an infectious melody coupled with the drumline (including maracas!) and the bassline to create a song that sounds fresh every time I hear it, even sixteen years down the road. The vocals are understated, but work well with the lyrics, which are basically the story of a couple falling in love and tuning everyone else out so they can just talk to each other. And the whistling--perfection, the cherry on the top of a great indie pop single. And another excellent addition to the musical annals that are Friday Night Jukebox.
Lyric Sheet: "Everyone is leaving I'm still with you/It doesn't matter what we do/Where we are going too/We can stick around and see this night through..."
Enjoy:
Fuck Donald Trump
Peace,
emaycee
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