Skipperlaks – When Absurdity Becomes Music
Michael Staun explores absurd humour, unexpected images and playful songwriting in Skipperlaks, from Alkohol i blodet and Møjn Møjn Møjn to Skål og Hurra.
On absurd humour, strange stories and the art of surprise
Why must song lyrics always make sense? Why should a story be logical, and why must words necessarily take us where we expect to go?
In Skipperlaks, we have a fondness for the absurd, the quirky and the unexpected. Our songs inhabit a world somewhere between sailors’ songs, popular humour and pure nonsense.
And that is entirely intentional.
Painting pictures people do not expect
When I write lyrics for Skipperlaks, I am not necessarily trying to tell a story that follows the rules of reality.
Quite the opposite.
I find it interesting when words create images that listeners do not expect.
Why write about a beautiful sunset when you could write about the Pope with a red guitar?
It is about creating pictures that listeners must use their own imagination to see.
And sometimes things become so absurd that the absurdity itself is what makes them funny.
From Calcutta to Cuba in a Tesla
In our song Alkohol i blodet (Alcohol in the Blood), the story begins with a journey to Calcutta on a flying carpet.
Soon afterwards, we find ourselves in a Tesla heading for Cuba, where the car is traded for an old, dented tuba.
The tuba is filled with mojito, and from there the story really takes off.
Does it make sense?
Not at all.
But you can picture it, and that is precisely the point.
The rhymes and the sounds of words are allowed to carry the story forward. Sometimes the next line appears simply because one word sounds funny alongside another.
A sailor gone astray
In Møjn Møjn Møjn, a sailor travels to Tyrol to learn to play the fiddle.
He misses the sunshine, rents a gondola and sails to Southern Jutland, where he finds love.
It is a love story, but certainly not a traditional one.
Here, absurdity becomes part of the storytelling itself. The tale is told as if everything were perfectly normal, even though the events are completely illogical.
Three wise men from Brøndby Strand
In Skål og Hurra (Cheers and Hooray), we take the familiar Danish Christmas hymn Et barn er født i Betlehem (A Child Is Born in Bethlehem) as our starting point.
But in our version, the three wise men come from Brøndby Strand, sail in a rubber duck and follow the star to Aabenraa.
There they find Jesus in the manger wearing lederhosen.
He offers them a smoke and Christmas schnapps, but receives a roughing-up in return.
It is a mixture of Christmas tradition, parody and absurd humour.
And precisely because the melody is so familiar, the unexpected lyrics become even more surprising.
🎧 Listen to Skål og Hurra on Spotify
When the rhymes decide the story
Playing with words is an important part of my songwriting.
Sometimes it is not the story that determines the rhymes. It is the rhymes that determine the story.
One word leads to another, and suddenly you find yourself somewhere you could never have imagined.
It brings a freedom in which imagination does not have to obey the rules of reality.
And perhaps that is exactly why these strange stories work.
The absurd needs no explanation
For me, one of the most important things is not to start explaining the joke.
If a sailor sails from Tyrol to Southern Jutland in a gondola, then that is simply what he does.
No explanation is needed.
Listeners can form the images for themselves.
Of course, Skipperlaks is also about music, celebration, beer and singing together. But behind the cheerful melodies lies a deep enjoyment of playing with language and challenging expectations.
Why paint a picture everyone has already seen when you can paint one nobody has ever imagined?
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Michael Staun – Skipperlaks