ABSTRACT
Locating the pleasures of the pop text allows us to discuss subversion in various ways. One vital pleasure of popular music from the Nordic region is how artists harness globalised popular music codes and subvert them at the same time. This chapter argues that any notion of ‘Nordic cool’ should be theorised critically in the light of the deftness with which artists create pop texts that enable subversive pleasures through language, musical style, and identity politics. To this end, the chapter builds on close readings of Swedish artist Tove Lo and Norwegian group Cloroform as multi-faceted musical agents in a Nordic context. Crucially, these analyses shed light on the artists’ music and personae, exploring the centrality of gender performativity and theatricality to ideas of Nordicness and Nordic sounds. In this, the chapter re-assesses previous interrogations of concepts of the ‘Nordic’ in popular music studies by Stan Hawkins and others.
