Released on Friday 10th of July was Finnish singer Käärijä’s new EP Vitun Hyvää Joulua, alsofeaturing SANNI, via Warner Music Finland.
Outside of Finland, Käärijä is best known for representing Finland in the 2023 edition of the Eurovision Song Contest with the super catchy and chaotic song “Cha Cha Cha”, winning the public vote across Europe in the process. Käärijä’s “Cha Cha Cha” topped the charts in Finland, Sweden, Latvia and Lithuania and reached the top 10 in thirteen other countries including the UK. This made it one of the highest performing Finnish language songs ever produced! On a personal note, I have to say that even today I’m still listening to “Cha Cha Cha” and rocking out to it every time.
This brand new EP consists of three tracks, all of them featuring SANNI who is also a Finnish singer. The three tracks are; ‘Booty Call’, ‘Hei me pärjätään’ and ‘Sinkkumies’; all three tracks are sung in Finnish, which adds to the authentic Europop charm. It’s also really nice and somewhat unusual to find an artist that is seeing cross-nation success while singing in a native non-English language. Käärijä is no stranger to bold collaborations, having recently released awesome material with fellow Eurovision icons including Baby Lasagne, Tommy Cash, Joost Klein and Erika Vikman.
This EP goes from being super energetic on the first track, starting hard with full on electronic sounds and rock notes; to a much softer overall sound on the second track, with a bass-filled EDM style ballad. Outside of Finland, there won’t be many listeners that understand the lyrics, but that doesn’t detract from the generally feel-good atmosphere throughout. The third and final part of the EP has a super strong EUROSUMMER feel to it, with soft yet rising vocals from both Käärijä and SANNI giving another feel good track that makes you want to crank up the volume in your car on the way to the beach or to a summer party.
All in all I think this is a brilliant EP; it’s a departure from ‘Cha Cha Cha’ for sure, but I did enjoy hearing how Käärijä can go from genre to genre and still command attention. I’m hoping that, very soon, we might get a new studio album from Käärijä, as this would be an absolutely amazing follow up to his brilliant 2024 album People’s Champion, which capitalised on the global breakthrough of “Cha Cha Cha”. Whatever Käärijä decides to do I’ll sure be keeping an eye out.
Käärijä will be touring Europe this autumn.
Find tickets here: https://www.ticketmaster.co.uk/kaarija-tickets/artist/5410455
