Finland's Mr. Chartmeister
Jake Nyman knows what your parents were listening to when you were conceived...
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By Kira Gronow
Thanks be to the good people of Zimbabwe!
It was partly by their doing that Finland's first volume of pop-charts listings saw the light of day.
"I've been collecting chart histories from different countries, and it came as a real shock to discover that one had been compiled for the singles and albums released in Zimbabwe. I figured that now at least Finland ought to have its own", says Jake Nyman, radio journalist, the compiler of the weekly album and singles charts broadcast on YLE (the Finnish Broadcasting Company), and the author of Suuri Suomalainen Listakirja (The Big Book of Finnish Charts).
Nyman is the Finnish Chartmeister.
Until now, oddly enough, there has been no Finnish volume that would have collected together lists of the most popular records week by week and the history of the pop charts in this country.
And putting together this book was no easy task, since the material was spread all over the place and in total disarray. Nyman dug out information from sources like old press clippings and from the archive shelves of record companies.
You might not think so, but reading old album and singles lists is an extraordinarily interesting pastime. The new book tells us, for instance, who and what were sitting on top of this part of the world in 1955: Metro-tytöt (a female vocal trio) and Olavi Virta, Finland's first "Tango King".
And in what year did the Finnish rock and pop fraternity release Maksamme velkaa (Paying our Dues), in order to raise money for Ethiopa in the style of "Live Aid"? Yes, it was in 1985 - and another version came out early this year after the tsunami in the Indian Ocean.
But aside from the delicious minutiae, the biggest question that comes to mind from the lists is: has the Finnish taste in music gone downhill?!?
If you compare the album chart for this time of year in 1970 and in 1990, the conclusions are inescapable. In 1970 the Top 5 included CCR, Led Zeppelin (twice), Simon and Garfunkel'sBridge over Troubled Water, and Jimi Hendrix, while in 1990 the list was headed by Ressu Redford, formerly the vocalist with an '80s Finnish boy-band called Bogart Co. and the Top 10 included numerous "Greatest Hits" collections and a compilation album from a local "opportunity knocks" TV-show in which pre-teen hopefuls sang to get their fifteen minutes of fame.
So what HAPPENED in the 20 years?
"I guess nobody's musical tastes can be described as bad", says Nyman chivalrously. "But in every form of art there are fat years and there are lean years. It is easy to look back afterwards and say - that was a fertile period, and that one was not."
Nyman offers the reminder that the pop charts do not really represent the musical tastes of the entire country.
"They reflect the tastes of the record-buying public. Some are content with a diet of what they hear on the radio. If a record shifts 100,000 copies hereabouts, people are quick to say that everyone has gone out and bought it. And yet, the fact is that 4,900,000 Finns have actually neglected to buy it!"
For all that, the charts do tell a surprising amount about the society from which they came.
"The singles and album lists reflect the ideals and the attitudes of their time. One could for instance ponder whether a record could have appeared earlier or later than it did."
"Take the case of Marilyn by Juice [prolific singer-songwriter-arranger-translator-poet-playwright Pauli Matti Juhani "Juice" Leskinen, a Finnish musical icon, even ranked #38 in a recent poll of the 100 Greatest Finns]. That piece came out as a single in 1974 [and was at #1 for several months], and it could never have been released in the 1950s because it contained the verb "onanoida" (masturbate): it simply wouldn't have got past the powers-that-be."
"In difficult times, like during a recession, the lists have usually been filled with lightweight ear-candy", notes Nyman.
Nyman must certainly be able to say what has been the best-ever vintage for the charts.
"In my view, it would be 1966. That year saw the arrival of some really powerful stuff, including the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds, Revolver from The Beatles, Aftermath by the Rolling Stones, and Bob Dylan's double album classic Blonde on Blonde. It was also the year when soul music broke through, and the first really big year for LP album sales."
"I was 16 at the time. And of course there were parties at people's homes, and the first girfriends and all that."
And what about the worst of the lot?
"Up here, the beginning of the 70s. It was a decade of corny stuff. There were tacky glam clothes, 40cm-wide flares, and glitzy platform-soled boots. I started doing a write-in request programme on the radio in 1973. I hated all the bubblegum music and bad rock everyone wanted, but I had to play the stuff. It was a tough gig."
The present-day lists get praise from Nyman.
"There was a long phase during which Finnish bands and artists got a raw deal. Now they are much more appreciated, and Finnish bands have even started to appeal to others outside the country. Besides, the Finnish singles and album lists look nice when you compare them with the standard Central European fare - those others are all full of cross-national pap."
Nyman goes on: "There's more - the strong profile of domestic product also says that we want big national stories and narratives. Even if we are in the EU, there's no great desire to just blend in with the mass. Finnish film and even the literature is doing very nicely and all this is reflected back in the chart standings."
And how did Jake Nyman first get interested in charts and the making of them?
"At the beginning of the 1960s there used to be a thing on the radio called 8 kärjessä (Eight at the Top). It was a kind of radio "Juke Box Jury" thing, where a panel of young people gave points to songs. I used to write the results down in a notebook. Then I'd make my own list next to the one I'd just heard."
In the 1970s, the weekly chart listings were taken off the air.
"They were regarded as way too commercial, but the fact of the matter is that the radio and the record companies are in a marriage of convenience, and in fact a very close one", says Nyman.
At the beginning of the 1990s rock journalist Nyman started producing a chart programme for the then Radiomafia on YLE. "Then the TV people and IFPI Finland got interested and asked if I could start doing an 'official' Finnish chart."
Jake Nyman gets phone-calls even in his spare time about chart questions.
"The usual form is that the caller wants to know what was in the charts when he or she was born. I tell them what they want to hear, but I always ask whether it wouldn't be more interesting to know what was at #1 nine months earlier..."
"When I pointed this out at the press launch for the book, there was an immediate loud rustling of pages as the journos all flipped madly through the book to the relevant dates!"
Finally, a bit of bad news: Jake Nyman will be quitting the charts business at the end of the year.
"I'm switching over to do a 52-part radio series on the history of popular music. I'll also be carrying on with Kadonneen levyn mestsästäjät and Tähtisumua."
The first of these shows, on YLEQ, is a request programme geared to people looking for that lost track from the past, and the other show, on YLE1, highlights mainly Anglo-American light music and film music from the 1930s to the 1970s.
Are you going to miss your weekly chart fix?
"Not really that much, although there is always an element of excitment about the outcome each week."
Nyman predicts that the coming week's album #1 is a toss-up between Pedot from Finnish band CMX or Rammstein's Rosenrot, which went in to the top spot with a bullet last week.*
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print in the Nyt weekly supplement of 11.11.2005
*Note: As it happens, CMX edged it.
Jake Nyman: Suuri suomalainen listakirja (in Finnish). Tammi, 2005, EUR 125.00
TOP40 Albums Chart TV2, Saturdays at 11.00 and repeated at 23.30. The Singles Top 20 list is broadcast on radio (YLEX) at 12.00 on Sundays and is repeated at 22.00.
More on this subject:
 It all began with singles
1970 to 1990: What Happened?
Previously in HS International Edition:
Sales of recordings continue their slide (29.10.2004)
Links:
YLE: weekly album and singles lists
Helsingin Sanomat
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| 15.11.2005 - THIS WEEK |
Finland's Mr. Chartmeister
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