Saturday, October 17, 2009

Dancing On A Saturday Night - Lauantaina bailataan vaan


As it's Saturday, let's party with Anja Niskanen and "Lauantaina bailataan vaan" (Saturday's only for partying). Anja won the popular "Syksyn Sävel" (Autumn Tune) TV song contest in 1984 and became a teen starlet overnight being only 16 at the time. To cash on the victory an album was released and it went gold. From that album is this teenage party song. Anja was perhaps the first Finnish female teen pop star who really sounded her age. There were of course earlier popsters that were young but this was the first entry in the girlie pop field. The original song was from the pens of Barry Blue and Lynsey de Paul, both pop artists in their own right, but often teamed up in writing songs. This "Dancing On A Saturday Night" was a huge disco-pop hit for Barry in 1973. You can see him performimg it here. Barry's real name was Barry Green and he had a small hit under that name in 1972, but when he 'changed colour', he struck gold.

Updated on 28.08.2010: added the first (1974) Finnish version "Lauantaina kaikki tanssii" by Markku Karjalainen.

Here's the triplet:

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