Delving back into the archives I see it was as long ago as March 2022 when Starlingville first paid us a visit, with a single, ‘Beautiful Day’ which was about as upbeat as you can expect to get in any situation, and a feel-good ambience that you might associate with the popular US comedy TV series, ‘Cheers’, where “everybody knows your name.”
Here, on ‘Good thing going on’ they replicate and enhance that ambience even further if that’s possible in a song that I’m certain Hanson would live to perform. You can’t possibly feel anything but good listening to it as singer and songwriter Anders Andreassen dares you to embrace life’s joyful moments, enjoy them, cultivate them, and remember them – even when life throws curveballs.
The song actually turns out to be about forbidden love, though you’d never guess it. There’s no public disapprobation here, no finger pointing and tut-tutting, just a desire to carpe that diem and enjoy the moment. So she’s someone else’s wife, but that’s for tomorrow. Right now she’s all yours, and vice versa.
It’s all terribly Danish. The image that popped into my mind is one from the Scandi Noir TV series The Bridge where an innocent young guy, completely oblivious to what he’s letting himself in for, slides up to Detective Saga Norén in some downtown bar, and asks her if she’s alone and if she’d like a drink.
“You want sex?” is the reply, as she answers her own question by grabbing him by the crotch and hauling him out through the door to the waiting Porsche.
Saga knew all about forbidden love.
There’s not much more I can say about the song. It has a simple message, presented effervescently by way of a catchy piece of Americana/pop, and one that you’ll either line up with or you won’t. It’s the sort of thing they should make every BBC Radio jock play on the hour, every hour, to set the tone for their programme, and sod the morals.
There have been a few songs of this ilk released around the Nordics in the last year. I mentioned one of them last night, ‘The good things are coming your way’ by Finland’s Knife Girl. Let’s hope there’s more if it because few are bold enough to try this sort of stuff in the formulaic UK.
‘Good thing going on’ is out now.
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