Terje Gravdal will be well known to many readers by now. His speciality is cutting edge political satire in his Americana themed songs that is often tongue-in-cheek but which occasionally gets a little more serious.
In the previous track of his we wrote about, ‘Winds will cover’, he zeroed in on the Donald and his madcap schemes. Now you might think that a ‘Winds will cover2.0’ follow up would be fully justified given El Presidente’s latest exploits which will probably leave us here in the UK without any oil or gas before long. (Unlike Norway, we don’t actually extract much out of the North Sea any longer).
But instead, he turns his attention to the unstoppable and societal shifts that have mortified many people in the UK, and I’m sure equally so in Norway.
“Hi there folks, what’s this all about?” he sings disarmingly, before launching into a diatribe that spans religious intolerance, governmental lawfare and what Manchester United’s Chief Executive boldly referred to as “colonisation.”
“Fanatic flames are breaking out/Should we run or stand our ground?
They steal our rights, control our moves/They make us kneel, obey the rules
Can’t you see what we’ve become?/People barely holding on
What’s going on?”
In a song that echoes the exasperation of Billy Joel in “We didn’t start the fire” in that last line he cleverly channels both Marvin Gaye and Four Non-Blondes, who asked the same question, but from a different perspective.
Then, “At times like this truth’s a crime…should we resist or be enslaved?” That could have been lifted straight out of ‘1984’.
He doesn’t pull any punches. Inadvertently, with this song at least, Terje has become the ‘Amelia’ of Norway, the British, country-loving female purple haired ‘Goth girl’ A.I. Avatar meme who started off as a governmental propagandist woke rallying point for ‘progressive education’ only to be adopted by the political right and who today unites growing popular sentiment, often with video renditions of nationalistic songs and hymns.
Merely to take such a position will be divisive of course. It goes with the territory. If you simply aren’t prepared to sit on the fence with your lyrics (as so many do) then you will attract both supporters and detractors. You have to be prepared to bleed out.
From my vantage point I am merely appreciative of the fact that there are artists that are still prepared to nail their colours unequivocally to the mast, whatever those colours are. That takes cojones.
Find him on:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/terjegravdalmusic
