For this year’s Spil Dansk Dagen, Good because Danish teamed up with a bunch of young artists and prepared a little series with beautiful songs in Danish, including some translated lyrics and the background of their stories. Second in the small row of posts is one of our personal favourite soundsmiths on Denmark’s grounds – Copenhagen songwriter Jonas Villumsen, who shares the story behind the title track of his debut album, “Det Meste Er Billeder” (engl. “Most Of It Is Images”), with us.
Check out below where Jonas’ inspiration for this song came from!
By the way – in case you’re in Copenhagen these days: Jonas Villumsen will be playing at Karens Minde Kulturhus as part of Spil Dansk Dagen on Thursday, 30.October. For more infos, find the Facebook-Event HERE.
We were going to the moon in black and white
Before the world came in colors
Before we could track small signs of life
In the line that was your mouth, under your edgy hairI’ve seen you before
I’ve seen you before
‘Cause you were the film I saw last night;
Hopelessly sky high and thoroughly left behind
Under the stupid blooming bushes
Your red eyes have turned out the whiteCome to your senses
Come to your sensesBut the dreams kept on coming back
In pomp and splendor and dancing shoes
Last winter I read a book that seemed to haunt me several nights after I finished reading it. It was a biography on poet and singer Eik Skaløe of the, now legendary, Danish band Steppeulvene. A group that only ever released a single album; “Hip” from 1967, now regarded a classic. Aside from “Hip”, Eik has become quite a mythological figure in Danish rock history – partly due to his wild, imaginative lyrics, but also because of his death in 1968 – at the age of 25 – where he was found under a bush in India, near Pakistan, leaving a note saying:
“this suicide is decided and carried out by myself – no one is to blame except the cruel person inside me”.
The book, and the story of Eik’s life, is not nearly as frightening as it might seem. In fact there’s a lot of warmth, humor and curiosity in both the music and the writings he did.
Still, it was not the most pleasant dreams this book led to, I must confess. Not actual nightmares, but a weird, eerie vibe. I tried to capture a bit of that vibe in both the lyrics and the music. The song is probably more about dreaming of the myth of Eik Skaløe, than about the myth itself.
Listen to “Det Meste Er Billeder” on Spotify or via iTunes, watch the charmingly labeled “pseudo video” to it on YouTube and make sure to give Jonas Villumsen your Like on Facebook.
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