Hanoi Rocks

Why have HIM and Hanoi Rocks been the only Finnish bands to make it in America? Sami Valkonen, a music industry veteran involved with rock bands on both sides of the Atlantic, debates the factors that make up a success story on the American market.

The pop-music Finland of 2004 is no longer just “the land of a thousand sad and sorry songs”, as the classic Eppu Normaali quipped some twenty years ago. The former backwoods have become a baking oven for every conceivable subgenre of popular music, turning out appetizing fare to suit all tastes, from fancies for the cake-shop window to savoury nibbles for the basement bash.