As I always do, dear readers, I’ll level with you. I’m not a great fan of ‘novelty’ songs, especially where animals are concerned. As catchy as it was and even though I fancied the singer, Middle of the Road’s ‘Chirpy chirpy cheep cheep’ never really did it for me even if the video got 40 million views.
Neither am I a great fan of dogs, having been bitten by them for no apparent reason on several occasions. I’m more of a cat man.
But what attracted me to MATD’s paean to the four legged posse here is a note towards the end of their press release in which they say “In 2015, the band had their first number one song with their own twisted version of the Tim Burton film, ‘Alice in Wonderland’, titled ‘Who the Fuck is Alice.’
Now I’m not quite sure what that means. Wiki has no mention of any such song in the film although that doesn’t mean there wasn’t.
What puzzled me is this. Is that the same song as was created by Smokie and British comedian Roy Chubby Brown out of Smokie’s ‘Living next door to Alice’?
If so it shows they’ve got a sense of humour for sure. And it seems ‘Who The Fuck is Alice’ was number one in Finland and in the charts for four weeks. And it turns out it is a different song altogether!
And they’ve got another song called ‘French Kiss.’ Allo, Allo, c’est formidable.
MATD (Veli Eronen and Marcos Kuusjärvi) make a point of working with artists from across the world. Their project began in 2013 as Max and The Ducks, taking on the Finnish download chart with nine original songs before shortening their name in 2020 to the more artistic MATD. (I reckon anything is more ‘artistic’ than Max and the Ducks and acronyms always seem to work in the music business).
The song is categorically about the benefits of dog ownership which they practically implore you to do. Nothing about to walk them n times a day from the crack of dawn until lights out (or more correctly they walk you); nor struggling to separate them from other dogs that want to kill each other; nor picking up their faeces in a little plastic bag on pain of a huge fine from the council.
Instead they major on comfort, happiness and loyalty. Which is fair enough I suppose.
And the song is friendly, zippy and catchy without question. Moreover there are some guitar riffs in there that wouldn’t be out of place in a much more serious song.
Apparently the song was recorded across the USA, UK, South Africa, Finland, and Venezuela, which seems a long way to go. I’d be interested to learn more about why.
Ultimately the bit of PR that helped win me over was the comment “Next time you go out, forget your telephone and take a walk with your best friend.” I can easily go along with that. With a dog in tow you can’t help but look where you are going.
Find them on:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/matdband
Twitter: https://twitter.com/matd_band
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/matdband/
