Concert review | Antti Tuisku had the ingredients for an almost perfect hall gig in his hands until we reached the middle of the gig

Pop

Antti Tuisku on the Mayhem tour at the Helsinki Ice Hall on May 5, 2023.

In 2003 Antti tuisku stood before the jury and made no comment. Idols19-year-old Tuisku sang in the auditions of the program Craig David’s millennium hit Walking Away. In the insert seen in connection with the audition, Tuisku practiced in Rovaniemi with his dance group.

The jury thought that Tuisku sang well, but the singing voice was somewhat impersonal. In the end, however, they decided that maybe something could be done about it. Record label boss Asko Kallonen commented that Tuisku might be exactly the type they are looking for. Tuisku, who dreamed of pop stardom, listened to the comments quietly and finally thanked him for going on. Showed, not explained.

Singing voice outside, he had a sympathetic personality for television, which was watched by many people who had never been to Lapland. Tuisku was the kind of sympathetic and safe guy from Lapland, whose poster went to the wall and the coffin lit up every time he said “man” in prime time.

From the listener’s point of view, a person like Tuisku would not harm anyone, but would always be on the same side and support from heartbreak to funeral. I saw Tuisku and Harry Styles such stars are committed to.

Tuisku’s personality didn’t really find its way into music until 2015. That’s when the producer Jurek from Reunamäki and Tuisku became the dream team of modern domestic pop. Album I will not comment took one look at Sweden and cut the then anemia of domestic pop – and especially Tuisku – in half like with pliers.

The gust, then a relic of reality TV’s early craze, whose tidal wave had last hit the beach years ago, was suddenly rocking the airwaves and everywhere else. Tuisku was a reborn beast and the claws were “mint”.

In 2023 Tuisku is about to take some kind of retirement from his career, because in domestic contemporary pop, the cruel clock of the pension bomb is ticking in his forties. But that’s okay: Hector has been threatening to end his career for decades already and Danny too has done a couple of farewell tours. There’s still time!

Tuisku has now been available to the fullest. Farewell is long. Last summer was the Olympic Stadium concert, that obligatory stage belonging to the star status, whose symbolic value after inflation has only a shred left. This spring Mayhem– the ice rink tour ends with two gigs in the Helsinki ice rink. After this, there will still be summer festival gigs.

One more album should come out from Tuisku. It will probably come in May. Friday’s gig started with a song that might very well be the opening of that album. It was a mixture of spoken word and dance music, fitting Tuisku’s style, where he talks about himself.

In the song, Tuisku asks himself what to do after he has achieved everything. Money, friends, success and so on. Tuisku states in the song that the most important question should be answered: “Who am I?” Cross-seated Zen Buddha hawks rotated in the background visuals.

Are you kidding? Perhaps. Not necessarily. Tuisku has also published a self-help book Succeeded! – This is how you find yourself and feel well (2021 WSOY), which as a joke would perhaps be taken too far.

Lyrically predictably bland, but musically the intro song had a nice religious theme The chosen people – familiar confusion from the album. It set the premise of the evening in a club atmosphere. It plays on the third song The beast is unleashedwho sent the message that there is no saving now.

Tuisku performed at the front of the stage with a dance group. The backing band was placed at the back of the stage, almost hidden. The solution was really successful. The setting emphasized the community of club conditions, the important role of dance and the roots of Tuisku’s career.

However, Tuisku had no problem filling the stage even when he performed alone in the foreground. Charisma, voice and movements carried.

Hall gigs are really challenging, especially sonically. Tuisku with the background crowd got the hall’s power out exceptionally well. The live arrangements of the songs were smooth club music. The bass rumbled and bounced in the structures. Laser lights cut through the audience epically.

At best, like Jesse is my friend time, the gig looked and sounded like a techno hall party that could go on until morning. During changes of costumes and stage structures, the band played instrumentals that kept the hall atmosphere going. Even the earlier songs sounded completely natural among the newer ones as new arrangements.

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In Pop’s story bingo, you get to the top with hard work.

In other words, the first brisk hour was a completely sovereign thing to do, a brilliant and impressive show within the framework of Finland. Tuisku had the ingredients for an almost perfect hall gig.

Until, in the second half, the dramaturgy slowed down.

How long can you feel your own termination? For quite a long time. Tuisku started a self-satisfied monologue that lasted more than ten minutes, in the background of which the band played an improvisation somewhere between elevator gospel and Napakymppi music. The monologue was a familiar rant by a pop star in his forties about how at first no one believed, but then I showed, thank you for being a part of it. It was an inspirational speech that seemed to be intended primarily for Tuisku himself. Maybe practice for future jobs?

“Show don’t explain” is an old rule that Tuisku didn’t seem to remember anymore. In the speech, many things that are wrong in this time became flesh.

In Pop’s story bingo, you get to the top with hard work, despite your opponents, until it’s time to calm down and enjoy the fruits of your labor. As if there was even an alternative story, how everything came ready-made and you didn’t have to work at all for the artistry.

Domestically there has been a paradigm shift in pop, certainly partly due to changes in the industry. Like the rest of working life, pop has also become an exit-plan dream. Even those – or especially those – whose position is the most secure and profitable, cannot continue.

The Lutheran work ethic provides the conditions for the best preaching to the chosen people. Pop pops as hypercapitalism swells. Mindfulness and zen are no longer hangover words for the after-effects of capitalism. They become tools for optimizing human performance and, as words, do not exist until success and the achievement of that famous “everything”. The sorrow of modern man is that nothing is enough.

Tuisku told his audience during the concert that they are witnessing the end of an era. Maybe not now anyway. Cheek launched, or at least introduced, a word in pop music that isn’t going away.

During and after Tuisku’s long monologue, you could see how some of the audience’s attention also caught on. The monologue was supposed to set the mood for the slovaries, but the intensity just disappeared and the people around me started talking about their own things. So pretty Roots suffered from a slightly confused atmosphere.

The gig towards the end, however, Tuisku regained the saved atmosphere, especially Let’s rock– with the help of the hit, which was performed thanks to handsome choreographies. An arrangement emphasizing the electric guitar A hundred flashes – hit was also cheerful.

On the other hand: The nature of Tuisku’s career includes a certain kind of human restlessness. The fact that during the same gig they ask without knowing how to pronounce Nordis and explain that they are from the north, and then show sovereign control of the pop gig. After that, the loss of control is sovereignly shown with the opposites of not showing: explaining and convincing.

Also in recent years, Tuisku has oscillated between the most stylish musical successes and the worst style mistakes. At the end of the gig, a fresh jingle for children started playing in the hall The car stays. Maybe it’s a bit over.

I idolized in the Craig David song performed in the auditions, the song is sung: “I’m walking away from the troubles in my life / I’m walking away to find a better day.”

That’s when Antti Tuisku wanted to go from Rovaniemi’s Siwa cashier to the idol of the whole nation. From narrowness to an open world, towards a dream, towards something better. Now the road to a better day leads away from the limelight, but the ultimate goal will probably be the same forever: Satumaa, a place of heaven on earth.