My Recommendation: Kerli

To conclude the second week of international recommendations, today’s recommendation though technically not from the Nordic region comes from the same neighborhood of countries. Today’s recommendation comes from Elva, Estonia a relatively small country in the Baltic region by this up and coming pop star Kerli Kõiv, better known mononymously as Kerli.

Born in a small town of 5000 people in an abusive household, she began writing stories, mini books, and poems at the age of 10 to escape from her “abusive” household to an “imaginary world”, she dropped out of school at 16 to pursue a career in music.

She rose to fame after winning a Baltic song competition and winning a record deal for which she lied about her age, and later was stripped off of her record deal. Since then she moved to Stockholm, competed in a European competition, went completely broke, survived on nothing but rice for three months while living in an abandoned house during winter, later she moved to USA, and signed a contract with Island Records.

The song I’m recommending, Creepshow, comes from her debut album Love Is Dead even though superficially she looks like any other pop act trying to follow the footsteps of Lady GaGa with her outfits and antics, but to correct the misconceptions, firstly she developed her stage persona even before Lady GaGa became Lady GaGa, and secondly and more importantly the entire album is very a decent effort, I enjoyed at least four of her songs very much, here is what she had to say about the album

“A lot of the songs I wrote when I was really depressed, and then the later songs I wrote after coming out from my depression, so the theme of the album pretty much is overcoming obstacles and overcoming the darkness. I’m really grateful for all these experiences because I believe that until you are absorbed by darkness you can't overcome it and face the light.”

Creepshow is a guitar driven Pop / Dance Rock song which flirts in and out of the bounds of Goth Rock or Black Metal, but what I like best about the song is the sort of whispering rap in Estonian language in the bridge, I’ll throw in a couple of live performances here, do checkout the Facebook Feed for a candid interview of her's, here’s the song

For the curious, here’s the English translation of the Estonian rap, I found it on youtube so I’m not sure how accurate it is

The reindeer’s house is in the forest
From a little window he looks out
A rabbit runs by, at the doorway he stops
Knock, Knock, open the door
In the forest there is an evil hunter
Rabbit, come on inside and give me your paw too

If you like this song you can get it from the link below