Mademoiselle (Twist and shout, baroque style)

The Beatles has been a popular source for Swedish filk songs. Back in the early 70s the fan Bertil Mårtensson had grandiose plans on filking all of the songs on The White Album, and a few of the songs were later recorded into an ish of his cassette fanzine OGRE. Other fans, like Jan Risheden and Erik Andersson, later filked other Beatles songs during the 80s. Often this was done by the practice of translating the English text into nonsensical or absurd Swedish, mixing word-for-word translations with translations based on sound similarities and straight up nonsense.

(This practice is popular in Sweden outside fandom as well, but the results are seldom written down or documented, and often only relates to fragments of the songs.)

But it is Staffan Mossige-Norheim who arguably has made the most ambitious translation-filking of a Beatles song in Swedish fandom. Staffan was one of the few Swedish fen who can be said to have been primarily a filker in their fanac, and his Mademoiselle is both a quite decent (but with a twist!) translation of “Twist and Shout” and a reimaging of the song in baroque style.

Staffan is presented more closely by Wolf von Witting in CounterClock #17, which he wrote the soundtrack for. Staffan has also quite a few of his songs and compositions on Soundcloud.

Mademoiselle (Twist and shout, baroque style)

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