Most known for their own brand of jazz, R&B, and electronic dance music-infused pop, Swedish DIRTY LOOPS have been on a European tour recently. Their original stop in Finland would have been on May 24th, 2023, at Vanha Ylioppilastalo. However, due to the illness of singer Jonah Nilsson, they had to reschedule their show to a couple of dates later, so on June 5th, 2023, we made our way to Vanha Ylioppilastalo to witness DIRTY LOOPS for the first time!
Since there was no support act, DIRTY LOOPS started their show to a fully packed venue around 21:00. The stage was kept quite minimal, which probably was a wise choice concerning the bold pink backdrop that featured the logo along with My Little Pony characters and a rainbow. The fact that the show started out with flat pink lighting on the notes of, “Follow the Light,” didn’t surprise me one bit.
It was pretty intriguing to watch these skilled musicians do their thing on stage, with almost flawless execution. It was also clear that DIRTY LOOPS is a band that mostly musicians appreciate, because sometimes the audience laughed during the songs; it takes a sort of musical expertise to understand the amusement of well-placed breaks during songs, being executed in such a playful way. Not only was there room for fun, there was also sometimes applause after bass player Henrik Linder‘s soloing, and the songs were appreciated in a different way.
The band played through a bunch of songs, so to lighten up the atmosphere of the intricate compositions, they included funny speeches in between most tracks. During “Lost in You,” singer Jonah Nilsson hosted a dance competition, announcing that he’d perform the winner’s dance move after he was chosen. The dance-off resulted in quite an awkward, yet funny showcase of everybody’s best disco moves. After the song, bassist Henrik Linder asked the audience who of them is a musician. To absolutely nobody’s surprise, almost everybody raised their hands, to which he proclaimed they’re fucked and to let them know what mistakes they played during the show. Although, arguably, can somebody play mistakes in jazz compositions? Wasn’t it Art Tatum [jazz pianist] who once declared that there’s no such thing as a wrong note? After this, they started playing what was, according to him, the most ridiculous song of the set: “Old Armando Had A Farm.”
One of the reasons for DIRTY LOOPS‘ popularity is that they covered well-known songs from popular artists, varying from Lady Gaga and Britney Spears to Justin Bieber, allowing them to reach a broader audience. It was only natural for them to include some of these covers in their set. We were glad to hear the fusion version of Lady Gaga‘s “Just Dance,” Britney‘s “Circus,” and not one but two Justin Bieber tracks. Henrik Linder mentioned that Justin Bieber‘s “Baby” had the world record of the most hated music video, until Rebecca Black‘s “Friday” came along and suggested maybe they should cover that too.
Before the last song, “Work Shit Out,” they mentioned that they would fake going away from the stage and come back with two more songs anyway, so when we were not surprised to get an encore. “Rock You” needed the audience’s participation, where everybody had to raise their middle fingers in the air as the song originally was supposed to be called “Fuck You.” The set ended with “Hit Me,” which concluded a great night of wonderfully intricate songs – we can’t wait to see these guys play their music once again!
Photos and text by Laureline Tilkin
Setlist
- Follow the light
- Accidentally in Love
- Sayonara Love
- Just Dance (Lady Gaga cover)
- It Hurts
- Lost in You
- Old Armando Had A Farm
- Next to You
- Coffee Break Is Over
- Wake Me Up (Avicii cover)
- Circus (Britney Spears cover)
- Baby (Justin Bieber cover)
- Roller Coaster (Justin Bieber cover)
- Breakdown
- Work Shit Out
- Rock You (Encore)
- Hit Me (Encore)
