Video of the Week - Elina 🇸🇪 – ‘Love come around’ (single)

The adjective ‘derivative’ is thrown around perhaps too casually among music writers. Often it is used in a negative sense, such as ‘Musician X channels Musician Y so closely that their songs could be interchangeable’.

But I’m going to employ the word in a slightly different way to describe what is happening in the Nordic countries and especially Sweden where a new variety of let’s call it sub-Americana has emerged, apparently independently, and is evident in the songs of artists such as Sarah Klang and Ellen Krauss.

Another one to fall into this category is Elina (Stridh), already an accomplished songwriter for artists such as Zara Larsson, Astrid S, SZA, Maroon 5 and NEIKED (for whom she co-wrote ‘Sexual’) , and who has received an Ivor Novello award nomination during her short artistic career. In fact when I first heard the song I thought it was Ellen Krauss and that is some praise as she made my ‘tips of the year’ for 2021.

Elina’s ‘Love come around’ is her first release as an independent artist and on her own record label. It is a dedication she says, “To the people who get up in the morning and fight on despite life’s injustices and challenges we face, especially during this past year.” That’s a deft touch if you think about it because it applies to just about everybody.

She “reflects on the dark sides of the complex world we live in, processing everything from society's pressure and mental illness, to loneliness, grief, death and heartache, holding our hands and telling us that it’s okay to feel lost in all of this.” “I hope it can help someone feel a little less alone in this chaotic world”, Elina says.

Potentially ‘holding our hands’ could be cloying, overwhelming us like too much vinegar on the fish and chips. But to be fair she doesn’t indulge in that at all; rather creating an uplifting little anthem which has much in common with Sol Heilo’s ‘Lift your head’ which we featured a short while ago except that in Heilo’s song “there is still a light somewhere” and “the darkness won’t stay dark for long” whereas in Elina’s “There are many walks home to an empty house/Waiting for somebody to chase the darkness out“.Arcadia remains beyond the horizon in her world.

She’s a talented lyricist to boot. I particularly like lines like “Not all our bruises are noticeable” also the verse,

“There are many waiting rooms/Lot of bad news/Barely awake as too late comes too soon/When the ground beneath you is shifting where you stand/What you took for granted runs like sand out of your hands...”

But the exemplar is the chorus,

“And I keep on waiting for time to slow down/And I keep on hoping for love to come around/And I don't know how to make sense of the things that I feel”, which brilliantly encapsulates what many folk must be thinking right now.

The single is released alongside a music video by Hampus Hjellström featuring Elina and her mother in the area of her childhood village. I had to watch it three of four times to take it all in. It says more in three minutes than most of the pap coming out of Hollywood does in three hours which qualifies it easily as Video of the Week.

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