The Loituma Earworm Phenomenon

While the metal band Lordi may have won Finland's first Eurovision victory yesterday, it is the lesser known Finnish quartet Loituma and a 1930's Finnish polka that is hypnotizing people worldwide.

A few weeks ago, I posted a link to this page that John in Oslo sent me, of an anime character singing an endless song of what sounded like northern European gibberish. A day later, Kenny G played the song for what seemed like five hours straight, all the more impressive since his show is only three hours long.

But little did I realize the power of this strange little tune until I played all of fifteen seconds of it in my kitchen earlier today, and my wife and kids got the melody stuck in their heads for the rest of the day. (My personal antidote for earworms is singing It's A Small World After All while listening to Jump Into The Fire.)

And they're not alone. Listener Tom forwarded me info about the song from wikipedia and metafilter as well as numerous other links to fan videos of the song. And guess what - the song is northern European gibberish, although the gibberish was added by Loituma, which is the version used in the original flash animation.The original song was called Ievan Polkka, or Ieva's Polka.

Here's Loituma singing the song live [youtube link], the original anime shockwave page, a Dubya Loituma [youtube link], a robot dancing to it [youtube link], the requisite dragonball version [youtube link], with more going up every day. And if you want a plain old MP3 to play endlessly for someone you hate, here it is. (via)

Comments

[John from Oslo]

A popular ditty indeed! And - the good people at http://www.dosky.info/ has provided us with even more of these soundbits... Lookie here:

1) The "BBM Remix"
http://www.dosky.info/!bak/v1/Loituma_-_Ievas_Polka_(BBM_Remix).mp3

2) The "Finskor På Syra (Finns on acid)
http://www.dosky.info/!bak/v1/Loituma_-_Ievas_Polka_(Finskor_Paa_Syra).mp3

3) The ever annoying "Batman(swf)"
http://www.dosky.info/!bak/v1/Loituma_-_Ievas_Polka_(Finskor_Paa_Syra).mp3

4) ...and the full mp3 version of "Batman(Chacarron)"
http://www.dosky.info/!bak/Bacacha_-_Chacarron.mp3

eepilly dippilly eenjoy ; )

[John from Oslo]

Correction;

3) The ever annoying "Batman(swf)"
http://www.dosky.info/batman.swf

snickering on inward breath quietly

[Robert Simonds]

Correction: It's "Ieva's Polka," not "Leva's Polka."

[Nick the Bard]

That version of Macarron Chacarron isn't the one in the Batman loop. The Batman one is actually by El Mudo.

[loituma guest]

Try this one...:)))

Loituma Hentai...
http://www.osijek031.com/portal.php?page=6

[joe]

check out this version: Loituma by Starwars Darth Vader: http://files.ww.com/download.html?id=16642

[Andrew]

There's this Finnish Thrash Metal band called Korpiklaani who had a song called "Vakiraua" on one of Terrorizer's comp. cds (#28) which I can't stop listening to. It's like one of those catchy Finnish polka jigs, but with all the distortion and fast drums and one of the best choruses I've ever heard in a Metal song. And with an accordian widdly-diddly solo. It really does rock and so does Loituma.