Song Of The Day 5/22/2015: Pertti Kurikan Nimipäivät – “Aina mun pitää” (Finland)

I'm Ovision -- Eurovision! 2015: Tough break – the one song I was decidedly rooting for, from Finnish punk band Pertti Kurikan Nimipäivät, was also just eliminated from the Eurovision Song Contest in the first round of semi-finals. At one point in the oddsmakers’ pools it was listed as the fifth most likely to win the contest. I understand there’s been some rage directed Twitter-way about Pertti Kurikan Nimipäivät’s early exit. Which is expected, but no less scary. I don’t know how Europe handles conflicts arising from the Eurovision Song Contest. How did Neville Chamberlain do it? Did he have to give up the Dave Clark Five or something?

PKN’s story is very stirring. All four members were born with developmental disabilities, specifically Down’s syndrome and autism. They formed at a charity workshop in 2009 and garnered a big following in their home country, playing a sweetly primitive brand of punk that covered all the humdrum and dramas of daily existence. In the Finnish Eurovision finals they almost finished behind a local boy band, but won an overwhelming amount of support from the Finnish public vote. So this song about the exhausting mundaneness that plagues wayfaring teenagers (English title: “I Always Have To”) became the first punk song to rep at Eurovision – and, at one minute twenty-seven seconds, the shortest song in the history of the contest. Would that Céline had such a sense of economy.

There’s already been a documentary about PKN called The Punk Syndrome, and getting bounced from silly Eurovision isn’t bound to restrain their spread. Here’s an interview with Sami and Kari, conducted by an unusually chipper member of the staff of Consequence Of Sound. We’ll get ’em next time, guys.