Finnish Reggae — Exactly As Painful As It Sounds

MAY 15 1981 · 12:10

Riki Sorsa · "Reggae OK" · Finland · 1981 Placement: 16 · Score: 27 · Language: Finnish, English · Composers: Kari Kuivalainen, Jim Pembroke · Venue: RDS Simmonscourt · Host: Dublin, Ireland · Type: performance innovation · Broadcast: color analog Sorsa takes the Dublin stage in loose white pants and a Hawaiian shirt, backed by a band doing their best impression of Jamaican rhythm from inside a Finnish conservatory education. 'Reggae OK' is earnest, committed, and deeply unclear about which Jamaica it means. 16th place with 27 points. The Finnish press immediately identifies it as a national embarrassment. Context Jim Pembroke, one of the composers, was the Welsh lead singer of Finnish prog-rock institution Wigwam — he'd lived in Helsinki since 1965. The entry was meant as a genre gamble after years of Finnish ballad flops. YLE's UMK predecessor chose Sorsa partly because he had an unusually 'international' look. Legacy 'Reggae OK' became a Finnish self-parody anchor point. The song is still cited in Finnish media whenever Eurovision choices are being debated — as the canonical warning against over-reaching stylistic choices. Sorsa continued performing and died in 2016. Finland would spend 25 more years in mostly failure before Lordi's 2006 win rewrote the narrative.