Finnish singles chart #1s: 2003
Ah heck, has it really been since June that I last posted about my Finnish chart adventures? Going through 2003 sure took a lot of time - but I guess it also highlights how busy my life has been.
In any case, my archeological dig-through of my cultural heritage and its chart successes has finally advanced a full year, and I'm happy to post another summary of the year's best (and the worst).
>> If you want to read all the thoughts on the full year's #1 charts, check the list out on RYM <<
2003 is a genre mixed bag. All the contemporary trends are rearing their heads and making their presence known: Finnish hip-hop is continuing its renaissance years and is about to move from a novel new voice to an established part of the pop culture tapestry, metal and hard rock are going strong and securing their presence in the guitar-loving country, and of course there's all the flashy pop of the day too. And, well, some novelty garbage, just to round it all up. What's key here is how much of all this is not only domestic but sung in the native language too, as the airplay and singles charts continue to show just how cool it is to be Finnish, singing in Finnish.
Flint's Top 5 Hits of 2003
1. CMX - Melankolia (1 week at #1)
CMX's 10th album Aion was released in autumn 2003 and was met with raving reviews - over time, the album has solidified its status as one of the prime candidates for the band's magnum opus and perhaps their most universally acclaimed release. It's a dark and twisted record - a concept album about evil in all its forms, unafraid to throw in unexpected stylistic curves and frequently dosing in both prog and metal as it wanders its crooked, ambitious path. And yet, it was also a massive commercial success! CMX were already one of the country's most notable rock bands at this stage but Aion took them to yet another level - as signified by how it had not one but two #1 singles.
"Melankolia" ("Melancholia", quite obviously) was Aion's lead single and hits a rare perfect harmony between what's great as an introduction to the new era and what has legit hit potential. The latter is thanks to the contextually raucous chorus: "Melankolia" is a creepily lurching song that borders on a funeral march in its verses, but the chorus is a cheekily cheery ramble of increasingly surreal rhymes, made all the more absurd by how CMX's frontman A.W. Yrjänä rarely dabbles in such insistent rhyme schemes. The chorus is almost like a children's song in structure, encourages singing along and pops out bright and loud from the radio. The verses are closer to the heart of Aion, bubbling in the murkiness of processed guitar lines, lead-heavy drums and warbling background ambience, lost somewhere in the void where Yrjänä's mumbling voice is barely audible.
It's fantastic. Aion is by and far my favourite CMX album and many of its songs are meaningful to me, "Melankolia" included - this was a song that I was obsessed with and held onto as a random loose mp3 in my mp3 player back when those had significantly smaller storage capacities, so it'd pop up very often when I was wandering around. I love the atmosphere of its verses and how the chorus jumps out, and how it sounds even brighter and vibrant in the last repeat as all the instruments increase in intensity, but with an effect that's more manic than anthemic. It also fits so perfectly within the soundscape of the rest of the album that you barely acknowledge that it was the Obvious Single of the lot. It's a weird single, nonetheless, but a well-deserved trophy in the band's cabinet.
And as mentioned, this wasn't the only chart topper from the album either. More on that in 2004.
Adding to the whole 'weird hit' thing, there's also the video to consider. By this point CMX had gotten tired of playing nice and playing the game; this, combined with their general clout and success that gave them free hands in many ways, made them adopt a stubborn yet in its own way playful attitude of doing whatever they wanted regardless of the reactions it would create. Hence, the video for "Melankolia" (and the album's only video) - a day in the life of a career musician, starring the painting from the album cover and depicted in a slideshow format. I am mildly doubtful this was much of a music television hit. But they didn't need it, either.
2. PMMP - Rusketusraidat (11 weeks at #1)
The giant summer hit of 2003 is here. PMMP's debut single "Rusketusraidat" ("Tan Lines") arrived almost out of nowhere and then immediately grabbed everyone's attention while dividing opinions - and proving the point that all publicity is good publicity, because the noise from the haters undoubtedly kept the song afloat. When PMMP first entered the public consciousness, the general consensus was that we were witnessing another flash in the pan who'd promptly disappear back to nowhere after their obnoxious summer hit had faded away from the airwaves. By the time their ten-year run finished in 2013 with a series of celebratory arena concerts, PMMP had transformed into one of the key artists of the Finnish music scene of the 2000s and one that many of those former naysayers now pretended they had always cheered for.
The origin story of PMMP begins with the same very same debut season of Popstars which also gave birth to Gimmel (see the 2002 list). Paula Vesala and Mira Luoti, the two front women, took part in the season and made it past the initial auditions, but were eliminated soon after before the live finals took place (their "firing" scenes and criticisms would be amusing in hindsight, citing their lack of distinct voice and personality, if it wasn't for the rampant amounts of casual sexism those comments were laced with). Thinking the two young women shared a similar energy, a talent scout from Sony BMG approached them after the competition and suggested that they joined forces to front a project the label was working on to effectively release any songs that had been rejected from being recorded by Gimmel. This plan took no time to fall through (for a very good reason) but Vesala and Luoti did indeed share the same energy and they became close friends, and realised that despite the bad start they enjoyed the idea of working together. Luoti was childhood friends with the producer/songwriter Jori Sjöroos - a true renaissance man of Finnish music who has left a trail of countless projects under different genres behind him (by the early 2000s you might have known him from the doom metal act Thergothon, goth-rocking This Empty Flow or the club-hitting super-trendy disco pop of Fu-Tourist). Sjöroos, interested in yet another project to spend some time with, agreed to become the invisible third partner of the budding relationship. He would take care of all writing, arranging, producing and playing all the music, while Vesala and Luoti would bring the project to life with their immense charisma and firecracker personalities and took responsibility for the lyrics. Their chosen moniker PMMP means either "Paulan ja Miran molemmat puolet" - "both sides of Mira and Paula" - or "Paula Mira Mira Paula" depending on who you ask, with the similar branding to ABBA's name being an intentional nod.
"Rusketusraidat" was the first thing anyone ever heard from PMMP and it became a monster summer hit. And... we should probably bring up the video already because it was just as inescapable on TV as the song was on the radio, and it came to define how the general public would see PMMP. The video takes place in a very archetypical posh summer party (you know it's fancypants when the introductionary speech is held in Swedish instead of Finnish), which is then crashed by our two heroines who promptly go out their way to bring chaos and anarchy in the middle of high society. Luoti and Vesala sing about their search to sleep with someone after finally being freed from strict religious upbringing, they interrupt every moment of silence with irritating ad-libs, their delivery is full of bonafide brattitude and the production is as in-your-face contemporary as it gets. The opening line and the subsequent key hook is a screamed-out "helvetin hyvin menee" - "going goddamn well" - aimed with precision at any pearl-clutcher who'd have a heart attack from such blatant front-and-centre swearing in a pop song.
"Rusketusraidat" is obnoxious and very intentionally so, but there's a real sharp pop song working underneath - and that is why it became the biggest hit of 2003 in Finland, as well as why it's still a hoot in today. There's joy in its rowdy irritability, a real sense of fun in its call-to-arms shout to throw away all inhibitions. That chorus hook is so in-your-face it's practically violating your personal space, but god it's such a fun moment of wild abandon. "Rusketusraidat" acts dumb but it's written so smartly, with every detail coming together to execute a nearly flawless pop song that first gets under your skin, and then completely overtakes you.
It is absolutely a borderline novelty song as well, and the kind of song that could easily cast a lesser band down the depths of one-hit-wonderdom - but I can't help but think about Radiohead's "Creep" which was in a similar situation when it kicked off its respective career path (just replace the OTT abrasiveness with OTT sadboyism). PMMP, however managed to keep hold of the momentum. The string of follow-up singles all became hits in their own right, even if none of them were as airwave-hogging as "Rusketusraidat" - the ballad "Joutsenet" got there the closest. But more crucially, the band launched into an extended tour all the way up to next year's summer festivals and their live act, more than anything, played a huge part in shaping their career. Vesala, Luoti and Sjöroos were all big fans of 70s and 80s alternative rock in all its varieties from classic singer/songwriter melodies to the fury of punk and the gloomy and gothic post-punk that followed, and while a few cuts on the otherwise polished debut album Kuulkaas enot! leaned towards them musically, the live shows really brought it out. The group took no time at all to transform into a loud and fierce live act and they became famous for being able to change how people thought of them in the space of a 30-minute festival set. That's what won over the music nerds and critics - the duo and their extended live band (sans Sjöroos who remained strictly in the studio) became a must-see act and in their live sets, people started to see that there was much, much more to the duo than what "Rusketusraidat" showed. 2005's follow-up album Kovemmat kädet proved the point: it took the energy of the first album but wrapped it in more matured songwriting, a more emotional delivery and Vesala's increasingly excellent lyricism. The hits followed - "Päiväkoti", "Matkalaulu", "Oo siellä jossain mun" and "Kovemmat kädet" is an all-timer singles run in Finland, and to cap it all off they were followed by the one-off charity summer single "Kumivirsi" and a suitably PMMP-ified cover of 80s cult band Noitalinna Huraa! "Pikkuveli", both big singles as well (genuinely shocked none of these six songs hit #1, and it's this lack of chart-topper singles that stopped me from picking them as the "symbol" of the 00s in this list). Kovemmat kädet did a fantastic job in rewriting the image of PMMP and turning people's heads around. When it came time for the third album, they'd cash in all that for another #1 single.
3. HIM - The Funeral of Hearts (2 weeks at #1)
Their fourth album Love Metal was a bounceback for HIM after the creative and critical letdown of 2001's Deep Shadows and Brilliant Highlights. The record itself was put together in far more harmonious circumstances: rather than spend time in fancy foreign studios, the album was recorded from start to finish back home in Finland and with the band's close friend Hiili Hiilesmaa in the producer's seat. After the troubled genesis and mixed reception of the last album HIM had a lot to prove both to themselves and to their audiences. It was a given at this stage that any HIM lead single would reach #1 just because of the band's popularity, even if they had suffered a small dent in their armour, but "The Funeral of Hearts" did turn out to be a genuine hit that even managed to bring back some of the sceptics of the band.
The paradox of "The Funeral of Hearts" is that it's such a typical HIM song - for a lead single it's a massively safe pick, ticking all the boxes for what makes a popular HIM song. In a way it undersells the album which generally re-introduced the band's heavier side, and I'm not sure anyone at this stage truly needed yet another soaring bittersweet rock ballad from the band who specialised in them. But at the same time... what a song. Yes it hits all the familiar trademarks - but it hits them just right. The balance between the heavy guitars and the more tender areas of the arrangement (that gentle acoustic guitar in particular) is perfectly judged without leaning too much on either side, the chorus is a showstopper and the way the song pauses for a moment right before it launches into the final reprise of the refrain is dang effective trick, and then there's the verse melodies. Valo's voice during the verses is gentle and almost cherubic, and his vocals refuse to neatly follow the steady pace of the arrangement underneath it - instead, it ebbs and flows in-between the rhythmic chugs and finds its own way, and the contrast is not just unexpected for the usually quite regimented HIM but it really strikes the ear excellently. When that big, predictable chorus appears it actually sounds a little fresh. It's simply a dang well written and arranged song, and it's little wonder it had a foothold in the charts for way longer than its 2-week reign at the top implies; this was a genuinely big moment for them.
Love Metal sold less than the previous album, but you can't fault it given it followed a relative flop instead of the big smash album. More importantly however, it not only brought the band back into a positive light critically following the mixed reception of the last album, but it also reinvigorated HIM themselves. They genuinely felt like they were back in full energy and full of fire during this era, from what my memory serves me from all the interviews and performances. The follow-up singles did well too: both the muscular "Buried Alive by Love" and the breezy "The Sacrament" got a lot of air- and video play. Whilst in Finland the sales figures were a little more disappointing in comparison, worldwide Love Metal became a small success and further reinforced HIM's position as one of Finland's prime music exports. The following year the band took a bit of a breather while enjoying a quick victory lap in the form of the hits compilation And Love Said No: The Greatest Hits 1997-2004: the promotional single "And Love Said No" got airplay but I don't think many will consider it as one of the essential HIM singles. After the break the band reconvened for their fifth album, and they'll be back here again with it.
4. The Rasmus - In the Shadows (3 weeks at #1)
Okay, let's get to The Rasmus that you all know.
The Rasmus' fifth album Dead Letters was at the same time both a sequel and the flip-side to Into. The band hooked up with the same production team and largely kept the same direction, largely continuing where the preceding album left off with the tightly-knit pop/rock anthems. The difference is that where Into was so bright and upbeat, Dead Letters turned to the dark. The songs have darker tones, the band took to dressing up in all black and - yes - this is where Ylönen starts putting crow feathers in his hair. While the band kept their energetic disposition, the aesthetics were all rather Myspace emo - and I wouldn't be surprised if that's the reason why it broke the band through internationally at such an enormous level. The fact that it went straight to #1 in Finland is nothing - the fact that for many years it's been the most licensed Finnish song internationally (outside various Sibelius performances) says a lot more.
I never quite got comfortable with the Rasmus lads going all dark eyeliner on me - in my mind they were always the cheeky chappies of the first couple of albums and this sudden leftfield turn just looked forced to me. But at this stage it didn't affect the strength of their hooks and "In the Shadows" is quite honestly a heck of a banger. The secret is that disco kick it's got, both in the drums and that spinal cord of a bass twang that keeps the heartbeat rhythm throughout: all the songs ebbs and flows coil around that groove that gets your foot tapping in a borderline Pavlovian manner. When the chorus hits, it forces you to pay attention: it's a huge singalong anthem that was destined to fill festivals and you unabashedly join the makeshift choir with it. "In the Shadows" is, above all, a heck of a good pop song - everything else is just set dressing.
"In the Shadows" turned The Rasmus into international superstars and kicked off their altogether most successful campaign. Five whole singles were lifted from the record, and that's not even counting the numerous re-releases of "In the Shadows" every time it became a hit in another region. None of the other four singles reached #1 but they were all big airplay hits and their videos were constantly in rotation in Finnish music video programs: none of "In My Life", "First Day of My Life", "Funeral Song" or "Guilty" peak as high as "In the Shadows" but each one felt like a welcome appearance when they did randomly pop up on TV or radio (except perhaps "Funeral Song" which does feel a little try-hard at its tragedy). It sealed the longevity of The Rasmus' career as well - the reason we still talk about them is because of this album, and you know exactly why Ylönen continues to dress up like he's still on this promotional cycle. To no one's surprise, The Rasmus will return later down the line to this list.
Besides various reissues of the single, "In the Shadows" also received several different videos for different regions and purposes. The video I've linked above is the one I remember the most, nicknamed "The Bandit Version". "In the Shadows" was included on the soundtrack for the film Pahat pojat, one of the year's biggest Finnish blockbusters, and a special video was made where the Rasmus gang get up to no good as robbers in line with the film's criminal inspiration (the video was also shot near where the film was).
5. V/A - Black Night esittää... (5 wks at #1)
Christmas 2003 is saved from the flood of dreadful novelty songs that the charts were dominated by at the end of 2003 by a charity song! And what a surprise Christmas #1 it was as well, coming out of nowhere and then holding onto the top slot for several weeks against all expectations. A good showing overall from the Finnish hip-hop community.
Because, besides the charity angle, this really is a showcase for just how broadly spread-out the Finnish hip-hop scene had become, outside just the capital of Helsinki where the main action took place. I can't find the exact history of how all this started, but the basic facts are these. Black Night was a rapper collective based in the city of Tampere who were keen to show their roster to the rest of the Finland. Somehow, they entered a collaboration with the Kummit organisation, one of the Finland's biggest children's aid charities who were forming a fundraiser campaign against children's cancer. The plan was to release a posse cut single, but at some point the idea took root to feature more than just Black Night on the single. The final single would feature three songs: "Luottamus selkee" by the various artists under the Black Night collective, "Kipulääke" featuring e.g. Urbaanilegenda and Ezkimo who hailed from Jyväskylä, and a Helsinki-based posse cut "Pysähdy" which featured the Rähinä Records gang from Helsinki i.e. the big hitters Fintelligens and Kapasiteettiyksikkö among others. It's actually pretty cool how the radio airplay song (and the one with the video - not embedded below as the quality is so bad it actually impacts how you hear the production) is the Black Night song rather than the song riding on the coattails of Fintelligens' fame. News articles from the time highlight how surprised everyone was just how popular the single proved out to be, which is great news for the charity of course - this one really feels like a community coming together to do some good.
As for "Luottamus selkee" ("Clear Trust"), it's a bright and cheery little hip-hop anthem - I am trying to circle around the word "cheesy" but it really is unavoidably corny. But that's why I like it. I love this stupid corny nonsense, the upbeat melodies, the plinky-plonk piano the slinky guitar sample that sounds like a bit of sunshine, the cheers (particularly that "one of the ladies" YEAH! which sounds like a group of kids rather than women), the radiating optimism that blasts through every rhyme. None of the multitude of rappers try to act like tough guys, and actually the show is kind of stolen by the then-15-year-old Raimssi - I don't care for kid rappers overall but against this beat? It's all just one part of the cheesy fun party vibes. I can't help but tap my foot and shuffle around to this with a big stupid grin on my face, its optimism is maybe naïve to some extent but also infectious. And it's catchy as hell, to boot.
You know what? This sounds like something I'd hear in Parappa the Rapper. And that's why it slaps. Sorry, not sorry.
The Metallica Award for the Worst #1 of the Year: Pizza Enrico - Mita sina sanoa? (2 weeks at #1)
Christ alive, I don't even know where to really begin here, so we may as well start with the context.
It's not like Finland didn't have takeaway and fast food before the early 2000s, but at the start of the millennium there was a very clearly visible boom in that culture, and it was spearheaded by kebab joints set up by immigrants from Turkey and Middle East who had arrived in Finland as part of the recent immigration wave. As if overnight even my small home city's streets featured a couple of different kebab joints, and I genuinely remember the first time I tried it like it's some sort of a core formative memory (I mean I am obsessed with kebab now so maybe it is). Many others around this period discovered the 'cuisine' around this same time and all of a sudden we had a whole phenomenon in our hands. Now, this wasn't just a backwater nation discovering something new and exotic and becoming obsessed with fast food - rather, a big part of this was that it was indeed fast food, where generally even the usual options like Chinese food and pizza of course were more often than not sit-down places with reasonable wait times. Indeed, the other side of the "revolution" (as it were) is that these new kebab joints not only delivered their namesake meals at rapid pace in front of your eyes and they were easy to take with you if you wanted to, but pretty much all of them also did pizza on the side. The pizza you could get from kebab places was sold half the price of what the domestic big chains charged for their pizzas, and typically were a lot more generous than their big money rivals despite of this. Not everyone liked kebab, for example my mom, but she did like pizza and the sudden boom and prevalence of quick takeaway pizzas made these places an easy choice for huge consumer base. I say this without any kind of proper research so take it with a grain of salt, but I think kebab places genuinely contributed to the budget takeaway culture in Finland - indeed, in my anecdote we were just teenagers with no jobs and could easily go and grab a quick lunch with our pocket money, where previously the only realistic option for that would've been McDonalds (or our domestic burger rival chain Hesburger). The kebab phenomenon helped to bring that whole way of eating out or taking away on a budget to the mass consciousness, which in turn has helped a whole lot of different other food cultures and global brands come in and grab a seat at the table.
And against this backdrop, we get Pizza Enrico.
There isn't much information out there on the two guys behind Pizza Enrico, and that's probably something they're both relieved about. They were two engineers around 25 years of age, who found the broken Finnish that so many of the owners of these typically immigrant-operated pizza/kebab to be such a laugh that they recorded a cheap novelty song about it. I don't know what it says about the nation but the song became a viral sensation before we had even coined the term "viral sensation" and when it was released as an actual single, it went to #1. And now, in 2026, we get to dissect it.
To my credit, I didn't think "Mita sina sanoa?" ("What You Say?", basically broken in both grammar and spelling) was any good in 2003 either. It just sounds shit: an absolute bottom of the barrel, all expenses spared programmed production which throws in all these vaguely Middle Eastern sound effects and cheap instrument samples without any real point beyond easy reference points. The lyrics - all in broken Finnish from the POV of the restaurant owner and scattered with poor jokes about the sanitary quality of the food and the snappy attitude of the owner - are mumbled so incoherently that it takes genuine effort to actually comprehend the punchlines, and it's honestly not worth it. In the present day, it's difficult not to just view this whole thing as a flippantly racist piece of novelty rubbish and leave it at that. What else is there to say, in all honesty? Yeah it's catchy but I don't think that's due to any real musical merit, the "mita mita mita mita sina sanoa" is simply such an insistent and simplistic hook that of course it's going to stick with you. It is the worst kind of novelty song: one that jumps on a random topic, ridicules the people behind it and shows its clear lack of effort.
There was an album too, which sold enough copies to go platinum which is a slightly horrific thing to think about. But as novelty songs are wont to be, Pizza Enrico didn't really have any legs and even though during the initial rush of popularity there were even some talks of a sitcom being prepared based on the song and album, these plans were quietly cancelled as I feel like the everyone suddenly felt the joint jolt of shame from humouring this as long as they did. One of the two men behind Pizza Enrico had a passion for garbage and would release another trend-jumping novelty song a year later as MC Puhuva Pää, based on the text-to-speech "bot" featured in a popular TV text chat program; it's less offensive than Pizza Enrico but somehow even sadder, and didn't exactly repeat the success.
The video, done with a shoestring budget, is about what you'd expect, including the blackface (brownface in this context, really). Just terrible all around.
Hopefully I'll listen through 2004 in less time!
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