Øystein Sunde is a Norwegian folk singer and guitarist that's famous for his high-speed guitar style and satirical lyrics.
Tropes present in his songs:
- The Alleged Car:
- In "Engelsk bil" ("English Car"), the narrator sings about the terrible cars he's owned, including a Saab that coughed and struggled all the time, a rusty, leaky Citroën that forced him to buy overly-specialized tools, and a powerful Italian car that would have been cool if it didn't stall shortly after he hit the throttle. The choruses are about how he kept coming back to English cars even though they sucked at least as much.
- "Bruktbilsamba" ("Second-Hand Car Samba") is about the narrator wanting to buy an awful second-hand car that barely runs.
- The Alleged Steed: Zig-zagged by the horse in "Hest er best som pålegg", which looked so shabby that Sunde had to ask if they were sure it was alive. While it's not very well-behaved, it's good at attacking people and running away.
- Amoral Attorney: The attorney of the Con Man in "Han hadde båt", who claims that the prolific scammer is "too unwell" to face the courts.
- Antidisestablishmentarianism: "Overbuljongterningpakkmesterassistent".
- Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: The beginning of "Barkebille boogie" if seen from a human perspective. (the narrator is a bark beetle). He mentions the Seven Years' War, the Forty Years' War, the Crimean War, World War I, World War II... and an outbreak of bark beetles.
- Artistic License – History: In "Barkebille boogie", it's claimed that the Forty Years' War took place after the Seven Years' War.
- Badass Boast: The plane in "Liten og grønn" tells that he likes flying in storms and even "arm wrestles with Odin and Thor".
- Be Careful What You Wish For: In "En smule, ikke et helt brød", there's a drought and Noah prays for a little rain. Cue the deluge.
- Bestiality Is Depraved: Implied in "I Husbukkens tegn", where the farmhand got drunk so that "the cow got the ram and the boy got credit for two-legged lambs without wool".
- Bittersweet Ending:
- "Katta til Hansen". The cat is killed. Hansen dies and goes to heaven, but doesn't get to bring his accordion.
- In "Liten og grønn", the Twin Otter that enjoys his job, but it's revealed that he knows that he only has two or three years left before he'll be forced to retire and be demoted to rubbish forever. It's not explained whether this means death or worse. He focuses on the bright side, though, and points out that right now he's still out there and doing what he loves.
- Blatant Lies: In "Han hadde båt", the Con Man's Amoral Attorney claims that his client is "too unwell" to face the courts even though his exploits make it obvious that he's not.
- Book Ends: "Jeg kommer ikke på nettet" begins and ends with the voice of Reidar Morset, a show host.
- Brown Note: In "Sjæddåvv-bandet", the titular band of Dreadful Musicians was so bad that it ruined the hair of someone who was unfortunate enough to listen to them. It got better once the band gave up.
- Car Song: Parodied:
- "Super-SS-Rally-GT-Fastback-Hardtop-Sprint". the narrator is overly proud of his car and speeds through Oslo with his father in the back seat.
- "Engelsk bil" is about the narrator's numerous alleged cars.
- Catch-22 Dilemma: In "Jeg kommer ikke på nettet", Sunde can't get on the Internet unless he installs a new driver... which has to be found on the Internet.
- Christmas Creep: In "Julekalenderen", a store starts its January sale on 1 December.
- Christmas Light Chaos: In "Julekalenderen", the grandfather gets stuck in the Christmas lights and ends up dangling from them.
- Con Man: "Han hadde båt" is all about the exploits of a con man who scams people out of billions.
- Crack is Cheaper: In-universe in "Byens hi-fi asyl", where Ståle Krapyl (the narrator for most of the song) describes his loudspeakers as "cheaper than opium, but more expensive than marijuana".
- Deconstructive Parody: "Katta til Hansen" to Timmy in a Well stories.
- Destructo-Nookie: The German class (Tyskleksa), where the only thing that sticks in the narrator´s head is the mantra ''an, auf, hinter, in, neben, über, unter, vor und swischen". When he encounters two hot chicks from Bonn, they take him literally, with this result: "The bed broke, the matress ripped apart and the eiderdown fell down like snow..."
- Disproportionate Retribution: Discussed in "Smi mens liket er varmt". The journalist thinks that an athlete that he blames for his (and therefore his country's) loss should have been hissed and castrated.All he did was run as fast as he could.
- Dreadful Musician: "Sjæddåvv-bandet" is about a young Sunde's attempt to start a band. He freely admits that they rarely got to practise, so they were terrible (their "music" even ruined a guy's hair). To reflect this, Sunde shows his (in)ability to play any guitar solo straight throughout the song - and had to work pretty damn hard to make this sound plausible (being the master guitar player he actually is).
- Empathic Environment: Averted in "Ute var det sol", which has Sunde mourning the death of his father while the lively spring and beautiful weather go on like usual, disturbing his melancholy.
- Exactly What It Says on the Tin: "Jeg kommer ikke på nettet" means "I can't get on the Internet". Guess what the song is about.
- Fiction Isn't Fair: Several Sunde songs have people get away with things they wouldn't in real life.
- The sensationalist TV show in "Boltiten" would have faced consequences for recklessly endangering its crew.
- While the Immoral Journalist in "Smi mens liket er varmt" might get away with his sloppy journalism, he would have faced consequences for letting an injured boy bleed out because he was too busy taking pictures.
- The titular dog in "Tass" faces no consequences for eating children.
- "Ham hadde båt" features a white-collar criminal who gets away with everything and is free to continue committing crime because his Amoral Attorney convinces the justice system that he's "too unwell" to face the court.
- Five-Aces Cheater: Implied in "Dødsbo" ("Estate"), which mentions that the dead grandfather's deck of cards contained way too many aces.
- Fluffy the Terrible: Tass from "Tass". The word usually refers to a small, harmless creature, but this Tass is an attack dog that eats children.
- For Inconvenience, Press "1": "Sentralbordsangen".Press 1 - If everything is working fine.
Press 2 - If key 3 exceeds key 5.
Press 3 - If you would like to talk to 4.
Press 5 - For support in the Azores.
Press 6 - To go further back in line.
Press 7 - To win a Hovedøya bus ride.
Press 8 - If your broadband's gotten broader.
Press 9 - If a banjo solo is in order. - Freak Out: Happens in a few of songs, always played for laughs.
- In "Sokka mine," the narrator gets more and more angry that his washing machine keeps eating his left socks, until in the last verse he clicks completely, screaming at the machine that he wants his damn socks back, and when it fails to comply he blasts it with a shotgun. Then, he goes through a second Freak Out when a convenient phone call clues him in to the fact that the machine was designed to eat socks:
"Yeah, this is Sunde? ...Yeah, no, I don't buy from telemarketers, I don't — what? Socks? A sale on — Yes, I do need socks, I need... yeah! Should we say four hundred blue left socks? Yes! ...How did you know that? You... oooh, I know that voice! You were the one who sold me that washing machine last month! I'll take my four hundred right socks and pull them right over your head! And then you can stand there in the dark and fart — you bee scrotum! I have no words! I ONLY HAVE RIGHT SOCKS!!"- In "Svigerfars motorsag," the narrator's father-in-law has a spectacular one when he's caught in tax evasion, and the tax collector shows up to claim half of everything he owns — so the father-in-law loses his temper, gets a chainsaw and splits everything he owns, including his furniture, his television and even his toilet, in two. Before calmly telling the tax collector to go ahead and take his half of everything.
- Giftedly Bad: The chef in "Mesterkokken" seems to be painfully unaware of his own shortcomings, to the point of failing to realize that his customers vomiting after eating his food is not a good sign.
- Godwin's Law: From the end of "Du må'kke komme her og komme her":Sunde: All right, you're saying you're Just Following Orders, but they said that in 1945 too, and that didn't suffice!
- Gratuitous German: Justified in-universe in "Tyskleksa", where the narrator uses a string of German prepositions at inappropriate times when he tries to speak to Germans, as a result of not working hard enough with German at school.
- Hope Spot: Played for laughs in "Sokka mine". The narrator thinks he has lost his socks after washing them in a washing machine, but suddenly notices something in a pillowcase. It's his guinea pig.
- If It Bleeds, It Leads:
- Deconstructed in "Smi mens liket er varmt", where a Jerkass reporter insists on taking photos of a severely wounded boy before calling the ambulance because he only cares about the story. After the boy dies, he goes on to ruin the life of his grieving mother by harassing her into doing a follow-up.
- "Boltiten" is about Animal Planet sensationalizing animals that can kill you horribly, even if actual fatal attacks are rare. The show in the song even endangers its own hosts and crew, but it's ambiguous how much of it is done to hype up the danger, and how much is just gross incompetence.
- Immoral Journalist: The journalist in "Smi mens liket er varmt" doesn't care about the truth as long as the paper sells, and never bothers to check his facts because it "takes too long". He thinks taking pictures of a dying boy is more important than helping him, and later harasses his mother for an interview some time after the boy died. He also thinks breaking down famous, successful people is the point of journalism, and encourages people to bully losing athletes when they're already feeling terrible about losing.
- Jerkass: The journalist in "Smi mens liket er varmt". He thinks breaking down famous, successful people is the point of journalism. See also Lack of Empathy.
- Karma Houdini: The Con Man in "Han hadde båt" gets away with his crimes because his Amoral Attorney successfully argues that he's too unwell to go to court (never mind that his ability to keep numerous scams going at once proves that he's mentally capable).
- Lack of Empathy: When the journalist in "Smi mens liket er varmt" finds a bleeding boy and realizes that he's about to die, he doesn't want to call the ambulance before he has taken pictures of him. When the boy dies, the journalist takes no responsibility for it, but decides to interview the boy's devastated mother, not caring about the fact that he'll ruin her life.
- Large Ham: Towards the end of "Jeg kommer ikke på nettet", Sunde gets incresingly hammy.
- Lethal Chef:
- The chef in "Mesterkokken". He serves 1-year-old capercaillie and newly cured salmon (the latter at the guest's risk), thinks he can prepare codfish by blowing it up, and serves denatured alcohol (which is often dyed red in Norway) to meat and white spirit to fish. No wonder his guests end up vomiting.
- Possible literal example in "Du må'kke komme her og komme her". A customer of the reataurant is told that the ambulance has already been there, so he shouldn't come there and be a Picky Eater.
- Never My Fault: When the Con Man in "Han hadde båt" is finally caught, he tries to blame a random newspaper and his family.
- Picky Eater: In "Sokka mine", the narrator accuses his washing machine of being one because it always "eats" socks without holes.
- Pungeon Master: Sunde himself. His songs tend to contain puns, and one of the few that work in English is "Noah's Bark" from "Barkebille boogie".
- Rule of Funny: In "Sokka mine", it's not explained why Sunde would wash more than 400 pairs of socks in a month, how the washing machine only "ate" left socks it was designed to do that, but how was it possible?, why he didn't wash them by hand, or why he didn't just buy many pairs of socks where there was no difference between left and right socks. That doesn't stop the song from being hilarious, though.
- Scatting: A short section at the end of "Kjekt å ha".
- Sex Sells: Parodied twice:
- "Frk. Bibelstripp" is about a young "Christian" artist who cares way more about her sex appeal than the religion she claims to follow.
- The show about dangerous animals in "Boltiten" features a sexy assistant who's only there for her sex appeal.
- Skewed Priorities: The journalist in "Smi mens liket er varmt" wants to take pictures of an injured boy instead of calling an ambulance, even though the poor boy is dying.
- Stiff Upper Lip: Discussed in "Engelsk bil", in which the narrator's English car is said to have a stiff upper lip.
- Stylistic Suck:
- "Sjæddåvv-bandet" is about a young Sunde's attempt to start a band, which he freely admits wasn't very good. To reflect this, Sunde intentionally played all the guitar solos in the song badly - and had to work pretty damn hard to make it sound plausible (being the master guitar player he actually is).
- "Nå har'u fått meg" is a deliberate "Blind Idiot" Translation of "You Really Got Me" by The Kinks. Sunde went out of his way to translate all the lyrics literally, no matter how strange they sounded in Norwegian.
- Take That!:
- "Smi mens liket er varmt" is a Take That to inconsiderate journalism of people in difficult situations.
- In a live performance of "Skal det være noe mer før vi stenger", he said this about the hospitalized man in the song: "And the man was hospitalized in Akershus universitetssykehus, so of course he died."
- Timmy in a Well: In "Katta til Hansen", the drunken Hansen falls into a fire, and his cat runs to fetch his mother. Deconstructed when she tries to drive to Hansen, only to accidentally run over and kill the cat. Hansen burns and dies before his mother can reach him. At least he goes to heaven, but without his accordion.
- Try To Fit That On A Businesscard: Overbuljonterningpakkmesterassistent (over-assistant of the chef who packs buillon cubes). Subverted by the album cover. It shows Sunde proudly carrying the aforementioned card, with the full title, and this addition: "In training".
- Upper-Class Twit: This character type is the narrator of a couple of Sunde's songs, including "Pendler'n" (the commuter) and "Folk Til Slikt" ([we got] people who takes care of that)
- Wanton Cruelty to the Common Comma: The song title "Barkebille boogie" is a compound word that should have been written in one word ("Barkebilleboogie") according to Norwegian grammar rules.
- Word Salad Lyrics: "Det året det var så bratt". It's a parody of how the generation of Sunde's parents spoke, and includes gems like "I jumped around and stood while I sat, and ate sheep-in-cabbagenote stumbling while falling".
