Video of the week: Solblomma (Sweden) – Brigitte Bardot (album track)

Followers of the enigmatic and mildly eccentric Swedish polymath Solblomma will be aware that she released her album, ‘Alla var där’ (‘Everyone was there’) in August last year, returning to her native Swedish language for the entire album.

The album tells a story in every song, all of them are titled with a name and each of those names is a character with their own story to tell; some of them nondescript, others bizarre.

Now she has released a video for the song ‘Brigitte Bardot’ – I suppose it has become a tribute – and the video is directed and produced by Patrick El-Hag, who has appeared in NMC in his own right, and who isn’t quite as eccentric as Solblomma, and also Zebylon Winter.

The song is about the loneliness of being a human – and how you can nurse yourself in different ways. “Maybe by buying two guinea pigs”, as Solblomma opines in her unique way. I’m reminded that Brigitte became an animal rights activist; perhaps that has something to do with it?

In any case they are called Britt and Berit, while Solblomma takes on the role of Brigitte Bardot (and I have to say she’s looking good here, she could almost pass for the French legend), and the video also features an unnamed customer and a supermarket cashier, played by Patrick El-Hag in a cameo role, I don’t think Patrick will be following in the footsteps of Max von Sydow any time soon but good try.

There is such a disconnect between Solblomma’s lyrics and the way in which they translate onto the screen and ‘reality’ that I don’t know where to start. Many philosophers have tried to deal with the loneliness of humankind but none come anywhere near Solblomma for the unconventionality of her approach.

In the lyrics she climbed through the window and jumped into a gondola to travel to a country “in the south” and began reading Voltaire in the opening lines but that is masterfully translated into plodding through the Stockholm snow to the local supermarket in the video. Presumably the budget didn’t run to gondolas and production group trips to Venice.

She chats to a stranger (Zebylon Winter), who looks like he thinks she’s just arrived from Mars, buys a few groceries (forgetting the jam – oh no! – much to the chagrin of the guinea pigs) then goes back to the apartment to prepare some food for them, mixing an omelet in a plastic washing up bowl. It turns out, unsurprisingly, to be the worst and most unappetising you’ve ever seen.

In the song (mercifully not the video) she then goes on to cut someone (or thing) into thin strips, to buy a purple dress then throw it from her balcony, to sit in the reeds watching TV, with a pepper spray (those guinea pigs can be violent, perhaps they are gang members from The Bronx or Compton), and to try to find someone (Bardot? Is she ‘Desperately Seeking Brigitte’?) under a palm tree. What, in Stockholm?

And of course the guinea pigs are just toy ones. How could they be anything else in this whacky, surreal world?

What is she trying to say? What would Voltaire make of it, other than rambling on about “If this is the best of possible worlds, what then are the others?”

I’ve asked that many times of Solblomma and have never found an answer. I can only say that whatever it is it will be surprisingly erudite. Too erudite for us mere mortals.

Patrick El-Hag has made numerous videos of his own songs that are much more suggestive than this one, in which he has adopted a more down to Earth approach, as if he was filming scenes for a TV soap opera. I’m surprised he didn’t resort to chasing her around with a hand-held camera for an even grittier inner city effect.

One thing you can always guarantee with Solblomma is entertainment and that is exactly what this is.

(Continues after the video).

Find her on:

Website: https://solblomma.com/