What does it take to make the girls swoon? Meet Christopher – a boy-wonder with a silky smooth voice and tousled curls to match, who, at only 22, is the Danish answer to all your secret, pre-teen dreams combined. Jutland Station loses their hearts – and their brains – to a pop star on the rise.
Inside by Katherine Dunn. Jutland Station.
Who is Christopher?
If you’re a teenage girl in Denmark, he’s probably the background on your iPhone. Or maybe he’s even on the case itself – his curly haired, lip-biting gaze glazed in plastic, that irresistible look that says, girl – from Thisted to København, I’m going to make you mine.
He’s your blue-eyed, homegrown Danish boyfriend, playing on your Spotify and on the Strøget (if you’re foreign, you mistook him for Justin Timberlake). He’s your guide to love (“you’re crazy, but baby, I can’t think of letting you go”), to sex (“tell me how you like it rough, love it when I pull your hair babe”), and, depending on your age, he might be your guide to English (with few exceptions, it’s his musical language of choice.)
At SPOT festival on Saturday, he was also the star attraction: a visitor from Planet Boy Band transplanted – with a bolt of pure, unashamed, chart-topping pop – into a festival largely comprised of looping synthesizers, riffing beats and hip dudes with big beards (some of whom, it turns out, are fans of Christopher, too.)
The 22-year-old Copenhagener, pronounced “Chris-TOFF-er” in Danish, had a set sandwiched between catchy indie rock (My Heart The Brave) and ’70s glam rock (Go Go Berlin) in Aarhus’ sprawling Scandinavian Convention Centre.
With his gold-plated sneakers, “oh baby oh” lyrics, and young – overwhelmingly female – audience, he stuck out in a sea of on-trend electro-pop, but you’d be a fool to dismiss him so fast. At Jutland Station, despite being nominally-adult women with normally respectable musical taste, we give Christopher a hearty, unashamed 10 out of 10.
With his gold-plated sneakers, “oh baby oh” lyrics, and young – overwhelmingly female – audience, he stuck out in a sea of on-trend electro-pop, but you’d be a fool to dismiss him so fast.
Ten for putting on the kind of slick, hardworking show that offered a full dose of escapism – indeed, my brain evaporated as soon as he opened his mouth, and may have yet to return – and another 10 for being, as one giggling attendee put it, “really cute.”
In other words: ladies, hold onto your pants.
Since his 2012 album, “Colours” the singer’s style has evolved from a treacly, fresh-faced tribute to near-adolescent love and lust, to a nominally-less fresh-faced tribute to gettin’ down in the bedroom, with this year’s release “Told You So”.
It’s an album which keeps its influences up front and centre – the best songs sound exactly like Justin Timberlake (he’s big on the falsetto and the hand claps.)
The themes range from the club to the bedroom and back – from his hit “Crazy”, a tribute to an appealingly-psycho girlfriend, to “Mama”, a groovy dance-hit about a girl who got her nasty moves from her Mom, and “High on Life,” a generic club-banger about saying no to drugs (kind of.)
This is pop music as you’ve definitely heard it before.
As if to emphasize his fledgling risqué appeal, Christopher opened up his set with his single “Nympho”, a raunchy play-by-play of all the places in his apartment an innocent visitor might want to avoid. These include the bed, the bathroom floor, the stairs, the kitchen counter, and the straight assertion that this bright-eyed fellow would rather skip the foreplay.
All around us, underage girls screamed.
Nonetheless, one of his biggest hits of the night is a quirky novelty, and his only Danish song – a recent viral hit called “First Like”, based on the breathless comments teen girls have left on his Instagram. (Translated) lyrics include, “if you die, I die”, “Christopher, don’t you find it annoying that people say you’re gay and creepy and a pig, when you are none of these”, and “It’s some fucking shit I’m not old enough to go to the disco.”
The increasingly breathless crowd knew all the words, fuelled by Christopher’s expertly managed lady-killing onstage. He moved in and out of the screens of countless iPhones, grazed sweaty outstretched palms, and glanced across a sea of hopeful, bedroom eyes, turned upwards.
He moved in and out of the screens of countless iPhones, grazed sweaty outstretched palms, and glanced across a sea of hopeful, bedroom eyes, turned upwards.
Medical intervention seemed like a possibility – a woman (not a teenager) next to us spent the entire set with her hand pressed to her heart, almost literally swooning.
We weren’t much better.
Having taken to shrieking uncontrollably, I had left the notes to my fellow reporter, Ellie Sellwood, whose notes neglected the music and instead focused on key observations like, “almost cursed with boy band good looks”, “perfected the crooning biting-lip face” and “perfectly tousled blond hair that you can imagine running your hands through.”
Photographer Fred Bonatto had a different take, taking a break from spending the concert wedged in front of the front row between Christopher’s head-level crotch and a row of screaming pre-teens, dryly noting, “I’m surrounded by horny teenagers.”
Christopher only humped the air in response, and the crowd went wild (again.)
Had we simply gone home when the concert ended along with the other exhausted, love-lorn audience members, we could declare the concert, and this review, complete.
Unfortunately, fuelled by journalistic ambition and minimal brain function (“Nympho” will do that to you), your intrepid reporters and photographer slipped backstage to look for Christopher’s manager – and ran into the man himself.
Unexpectedly, we directly intercepted him, as he left the back area of the stage, trailed by his band, his team, and a large entourage of (more official looking) reporters.
Fred, unaffected by Christopher’s smooth-voiced charms, stepped forward to clap the singer on the back, congratulated him on the show – and sent him towards Ellie and I, who were standing slack-jawed nearby.
While it’s something of a risk to conduct a good, unexpected interview with a glassy-eyed pop-star at the best of times, Christopher seemed totally unconvinced at our frantic attempts to explain we were “international journalists”, and merely took us for the lusty fan-girls we had suddenly become.
Christopher seemed totally unconvinced at our frantic attempts to explain we were “international journalists”, and merely took us for the lusty fan-girls we had suddenly become.
Expertly wrangling us into the forced photo-op he no doubt assumed we had snuck backstage to attain (much to the annoyance of the other reporters), and with Fred gamely snapping away, we fumbled to turn on our phone recorders.
While Ellie remained silent – she said later she was overwhelmed by his scent, which she declared extraordinary and “slightly floral” – I blindly thumbed my phone while trying to find the recorder, and asked him what was next for him.
“What?” he asked, grimacing through our unfortunately prolonged photo op.
“What’s your next step?” I persisted, feigning seriousness, unaware that in the ensuing excitement, my blouse had come unbuttoned and was hanging open in a scandalous, subconscious attempt to feature in his next single.
“England,” he declared – and clapping us firmly on the back, making hastily for the exit.
If the picture looks awkward, it is just a shred of the mortifying atmosphere of the actual event, only heightened when my ensuing comments. Let’s just say these comments dwelled on Christopher’s non-musical talents, and are not suitable for re-print here and were overheard (and enthusiastically echoed) by his ever-growing entourage.
Three days ago, two reporters could not pick the guy from a row of blondes, and within moments, his magical appeal (honeyed vocals, crooning, clichéd lyrics, over-sexualized stage presence) prevented any coherent brain-activity from taking place.
What could be the explanation?
Since I still can’t find my brain – and I hesitate to claim that Christopher’s music is in any way new, groundbreaking, or critically acclaimed – I can only call it the signs of Danish pop star magic, on the rise.
Katherine Dunn is a student in the Erasmus Mundus master’s degree. She has worked as a reporter and editor in Canada, Denmark and the Netherlands. She’s also the ‘klaphat’ behind The Klaphat Dispatch.
This article was produced independently by Jutland Station.
