VARIOUS ARTISTS - MISCELLANEOUS COMPILATIONS

• 1992: Smash 11
• 1998: Joulu pulkassa: 20 toisenlaista joululaulua

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SMASH 11

1) Erasure - S.O.S.; 2) Was (Not Was) - Shake Your Head; 3) Dr. Alban - It's My Life; 4) Shakespear's Sister - I Don't Care; 5) Elton John - The One; 6) Felix - Don't You Want Me; 7) Kim Wilde - Who Do You Think You Are?; 8) Chyp-Notic - Still in Love with You; 9) Take That - I Found Heaven; 10) U96 - Das Boot; 11) Ringo Starr - Weight of the World; 12) Indra - Misery; 13) Del Amitri - Always the Last to Know; 14) Glenn Frey - I've Got Mine; 15) Blue System - I Will Survive

One from the personal archives, a childhood favourite compilation from the years before the music nerd instincts truly kicked in. Erratic at places but some of this music is timelessly great.

I grew up on V/A hit compilations before I started getting into music on a more artist-focused basis, and prior to the start of my own collection of more contemporary collections I would borrow my sister's old CDs that she had left lying around. I didn't really know anything about any of the artists or 90% of the songs on Smash 11 when I first heard it, but this was one of my most played albums when I was much, much younger.

I was also a lot more skip-happy as a child than I am now and in fact, the pre-pubescent version of myself has kindly marked the tracks officially decreed as worthy of listening in the liner notes with a ballpoint pen. There's not too many of them, and revisiting this collection a decades later it becomes clear why, i.e. because this is a rather random selection of songs. The bulk of the tracklist is very heavily based on early 1990s dance and pop - lots of classic looped beats, gorgeous house pianos, nascent eurodance synths - but then there's also a sappy Elton John MOR ballad? Del Amitri's cowboy rocking? Kim Wilde kicking it like it's still the 1980s (shocked to find out "Who Do You Think You Are" was in fact released in 1992)? Ringo freaking Starr!? Smash 11 takes a direction and then throws in wild curveballs when you least expect it. Even some of the songs more in line with the general theme stand out, with choices like U96's techno remix of the Das Boot theme (apparently a top 10 hit in Finland and a massive German smash?) or songs like Indra's "Misery" or Blue System's "I Will Survive" (not the cover you'd expect) which I don't think ever were actual hits. This feels more like someone's personal mixtape rather than a various artists compilation of chart-toppers that I'd expect to see in store shelves, though for what it's worth I have no idea what the actual lineage or concept behind the Smash series is - the cover says "familiar from TV" but I've no idea what the program was?

Whatever the idea behind this was it's full of classics big and small, and I'm happy to say that the past version of myself already had a great taste because of each of those marked tracks are still top tier. "It's My Life" and "Baby Got Back" are of course iconic and evergreen, the former one of the finest anthems of eurodance and the latter a true refuge in audacity that wins over by embracing its own over-the-top horniness. Of the lesser known cuts, Shakespear's Sister's rollicking "I Don't Care" comes with that excellent early 90s rock energy and has a real unique flair to it with its ethereal high pitch vocal hooks, a bizarre spoken word interlude and some fantastically corny MIDI horns. The "Das Boot" techno remix is also a hoot - sometimes a way to make a famous film theme even better is to run it through a 1990s club filter and marvel at how perfectly the melody works within a dark, claustrophobic groove full of orchestral hits and robotic vocals. The most significant unearthing of the old favourites is Indra's "Misery", a song I had no recollection of but which reveals itself to be a stellar early 90s dance pop jam full of rad attitude and neon colour cool. It doesn't look like it was ever anything more than a minor regional hit, but it's one of those songs I wish would have a stronger legacy or a bigger name attached to it, because it's got such a good groove to it. As I said, I clearly already knew what's good when I was young.

There are two very big personal favourites though, right there at the start. Erasure's version of ABBA's "S.O.S." was the first version I heard of the song and to me it's the definitive one, with no disrespect to the original creators. The cold and dreamy synth pop production and Andy Bell's emotionally distant vocals work so flawlessly with that killer melody and the lyrical tone, to the extent that the warmth in the original version now sounds jarring to my ears. This is my "S.O.S.", and it's one of the finest synth pop songs of the 1990s. The "Walk the Dinosaur"-hitmaker Was (Not Was)' "Shake Your Head" on the other hand is a fever dream which I can't believe exists but I'm sure glad it does. Kim Basinger and Ozzy Osbourne trade non-sequiturs with increasing surreality, somehow escalating into "let's go to bed", under a near seven-minute dance production (thanks to the extended mix featured here) with an off-kilter vocal loop hook. It's mad but very specifically it's mad genius - it's one of the most off-kilter chart cuts of the 1990s through its star power alone. I already respect how off the rails it is, but it's just a killer in general, a gem of a pop song with the most infectious hooks in the entire collection.

Beyond the classic favourites, this is definitely a mixed bag but maybe not in the way you'd expect. This is a really solid collection of both classics and lesser known examples of early-mid 1990s pop/dance sound, if you are into that at all - which I absolutely am, even without the nostalgia filter - and e.g. the tracks in the middle from the likes of Felix, Chyp-Notic et all work excellently as part of that stylistic suite. It just also comes with a caveat because of its more awkward side tracts. Not all the non-dance cuts are by no means bad (I've already attested my love for "I Don't Care" and the Kim Wilde cut also slaps) but like all hits compilations it could do without anything close to a ballad (hi Elton), and the classic rock dinosaurs certainly don't have a place here (again, hi Elton here too). The album also starts running out of steam towards the final third when it starts pouring the MOR superstars from Ringo to Del Amitri to Glenn Frey's poor man's "Another Day in Paradise", with only Indra there in the middle to save the day and Blue System's euphoric "Go West" -esque "I Will Survive" closing the record off with a bang; though as a mea culpa I don't actually think they are bad tracks per se, I appreciate their warmly dated vibe to some extent, but they're in the wrong company. I also have this irrational aversion towards Take That that I've never been able to cure myself of, and so they still go on the skip pile. Some of the strays aside though, a good amount of this set is simply excellent pop music that time has gilded. I'm not going to say this random chart compilation is a lost classic, but it's a footnote in my own musical history and so it comes with a lot of personal weight. That said, the best rediscovery ever since I brought this album back in my collection is that solid gold jams are timeless regardless of any nostalgia.

Physically: Very basic as you'd expect: a generic jewel case with a single sheet booklet with the credits.

JOULU PULKASSA: 20 TOISENLAISTA JOULULAULUA

1) Juice Leskinen Slam - Me käymme joulun viettohon; 2) Hassisen Kone - On jouluyö nyt laulaa saa; 3) Aknestik - Oravan joulu; 4) Leevi & The Leavings - Jossain on kai vielä joulu; 5) Pauli Hanhiniemi & Normaalijätkät - Tavaratalon ikkuna; 6) Sanna ja Lapset - Voitko vaari vilkuttaa; 7) M.A. Numminen - Joulupukki puree ja lyö; 8) Paula ja Rautsi - Purppurataivas; 9) Rinneradio - Jouluyö, juhlayö; 10) Juice Leskinen Slam - Sika; 11) Hanoi Rocks - Dead by X-Mas; 12) Eppu Normaali - Heinillä härkien kaukalon; 13) Ne Luupojat Surf - Kaikki uskoo joulupukkiin; 14) Yö - Joulu ominpäin; 15) Limonadi Elohopea - Jos sul' on jouluna märkä tyyny; 16) Jussi Hakulinen - Joulu avaruudessa; 17) Lotta Riepu - Sian leuka; 18) Juliet Jonesin Sydän - Silti joulu jaksaa naurattaa; 19) Inkvisitio - Joulupukki tepsuttaa; 20) Trio Töykeät - En etsi valtaa loistoa (feat. Pekka Kuusisto)

The old school class of Finnish alternative rock music celebrating Christmas in their own, curious ways. "20 Christmas songs of a different kind".

This compilation is where my fascination for non-standard Christmas music starts from. My dad bought this album around the time it came out and he got a kick out of playing it when my mom just wanted to listen to classic Christmas songs. Most of the compilation flew over my head when I was a little kid, but I loved listening to it simply because when I did get it, it was speaking about Christmas in a wholly different way than I was used to - a little more cheeky and a lot more rock and roll. These days I get almost obsessively excited whenever artists I like release Christmas songs or even whole EPs/albums, and while it's my combined love for both music and Christmas that's the main reason for it, this collection served as a catalyst by showing that it's not all holly-jolly standards.

Joulu pulkassa, subtitled "20 Christmas songs of a different kind", is a compilation of Christmas songs - both originals and covers of Finnish standards - from the 80s and 90s released by the legendary Finnish label Poko Records, one of the major names that defined what Finnish alternative and independent rock scene sounded like in the late 1970s and 1980s. The artist list is a selection of various iconic names of the early Finnish alternative scene, with a few unknowns thrown in the mix for good measure, and most of the artists featured are famous for being more or less irreverent or anarchistic in their own myriad of ways. With song titles such as "Santa Claus Bites and Punches" and "If Your Pillow Is Wet on Christmas" and the CD artwork featuring a close up of the cartoon pig's head with a bullet hole where the CD hole is (the Finnish Christmas dinner is centered around a piece of ham rather than a turkey, get it), the overall tone is all very playfully edgy, in the kind of way that old-school Finnish side-of-the-road rock scene was. It's the kind of record where you can find a punk rock take on a Finnish hymnal classic that can be described as literally snotty ("Heinillä härkien kaukalon" by Eppu Normaali, before they became barfly karaoke fodder) and where the centerpiece of the collection is a sardonic ode to carnivorous joy of slaughtering a pig and finally tugging into it in detail after a year of fattening it up. That's "Sika" by Juice Leskinen Slam (the only artist who gets to have two goes on the tracklist; "Me käymme joulun viettohon" is a functional opener that sets up the expectations for the rest of the album), and for the adolescent me it was the record as far as I was concerned. My mom hated the song, but its attitude was so radically different and incredibly amusing compared to all other Christmas music I knew that it was the sole reason I wanted to listen to the album.

As an adult, having come back to the record with my own copy, it's been interesting to realise two things. One, that "Sika" isn't actually all that good and that it would probably work better if it were 50% shorter because the one good joke it has (the ridiculous tone, with the wonky organ and unenthusiastic choir) has grown stale by the time it starts its third verse-chorus loop with many more to come. Two, a lot of the album is surprisingly well-behaved. In-between the unruly schoolboy takes are various attempts at more genuine Christmas songs, just with a more rock and roll touch. Some even barely register as Christmas songs: "Oravan joulu" by Aknestik (with its typically Finn-depressed lyric) is just a really good, smooth guitar hit while "Purppurataivas" by Paula ja Rautsi is a 90s new age electronica cut through and through packed full with the cheesy earnestness that comes with the territory. Leevi & The Leavings did a whole bunch of Christmas songs during their career, some cheekier than others, and somehow it's their most honest and genuine one that's ended up here - and that's great, because "Jossain on kai vielä joulu" is my probably my favourite Finnish Christmas song, dressing up its big bright chorus with actual Yuletide magic in a heartwarmingly sappy, but not too earnest, fashion. The record also closes with a straightforward instrumental version of "En etsi valtaa loistoa", which has one of my favourite melodies in the canonical Finnish Christmas songbook, and it's a genuinely beautiful take on the song, full of warmth and peaceful quiet that's basically crack to a Christmas romantic like me. It sounds so out of place compared to everything before it, but at the same time there's something pleasant in closing a record of off-kilter Christmas songs with something more traditional, showing that by the end of the evening, even the bad boys are allowed to feel a little bit of the real Christmas spirit.

It is absolutely a mixed bag of a compilation though, with the twenty-song length overstuffing the stocking. Some songs are genuinely great, "Jossain on kai vielä joulu" and "Oravan joulu" (which has become a regular in my Christmas rotation after rediscovering it here) in particular, and there's also other unexpected triumphs - 80s hair theatrics do little for me but Hanoi Rocks' "Dead by X-Mas" almost steals the whole show here with its glam energy. But a good half of the tracklist is decent if unremarkable background music, with some parts that are nicer than others but which barely scan when reading the tracklist. There's also a few real clunkers - Yö are always painfully milquetoast and their contribution here is so aggressively bland I actually skip it, and while I have general respect for the legendary provocateur M.A. Numminen's career, I have very little time for most of his music and the impish "Joulupukki puree ja lyö" isn't an exception. I'm generally not a big fan of the particular old school gang of Finnish rock history that this collection - and Poko as a whole, to be honest - represents and if it wasn't for that personal Christmas connection I doubt I would have ever cared to seek out to hear most of the music here; the tracklist is full of instantly identifiable names for any Finn, but it's like a list of artists that leave me completely cold for a variety of reasons and who I mainly just associate with boomer bars and generic 'Suomirock' radio stations, with a few exceptions. That definitely affects how replayable this actually is. That said, I also feel harsh about possibly underselling this: the amount of songs I like do to one degree or another outweigh the ones I genuinely could not care less about, and if you catch me in the right seasonal spirit, I'll be jamming along to this contentedly while wrapping presents or decorating my home or other festive chores. It's one of the few albums I own where the skip button gets used quite liberally to get to the parts I genuinely enjoy.

My biggest takeaway from Joulu pulkassa is, surprisingly, how little nostalgia I have for it. There is obviously some there, and particularly as someone currently living abroad, listening to Christmas music in my original tongue gives surprisingly fuzzy feelings. And yet, I have very little actual resonance or personal touchpoint with this record beyond some fuzzy memories, and I am suspecting I'm the one to blame for that - it wasn't until I obtained my own copy that I realised just how much I ignored the rest of the album in favour of - sigh - "Sika". Joulu pulkassa does make for an interesting time capsule of a record, but its place in my shelf is ultimately because of its (admittedly diminished) place in personal music history rather than because of my actual affection for most of the music within.

Physically: Jewel case with a barebones "booklet" featuring song credits.