The Whore Song

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Lisa Nilsson is one of the most well established, recognized, not to mention popular Swedish artists. The Swedish queen of soul. Not necessarily my kind of music. But she can - unarguably - sing. And since the concert is in my city...and for free...what the hell...? She does her thing: the hit songs mixed with some rather uninteresting, deep monologue. A solid performance. It is towards the end of the concert she drops the bomb; she describes one of her greatest hits something like "you know when you go to a party, and the only reason you go is because the host promised you your favorite song...a whore song - something you as the host feel obliged to do, although you don't really want to...but at least you can vary it, perform it with a single instrument or something to make it interesting". The song is "Himlen runt hörnet" (Heaven around the corner). I don't like the song either, so I share her opinion on this. Although she obviously would have preferred to omit the song from the repertoire, she does a nice job performing it, engaging the crowd. Haven't had really any previous opinions of Lisa, but now she has climbed in status as a stand-up gal, out-spoken, but yet with a kind tone. The venue is the Big Square in Malmö, and it's rather crowded. Inbetween the few songs I like, I observe a rather peculiar human behavior: People who are moving from spot A on one side of the square diagonally to spot B on the other side of the square, choose to do so plowing through the thousands of people in the crowd instead of walking around the crowd. Any experts on human behavior out there who can explain to me WHY?!?!?

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