Hey gang welcome back again to Ken Tamplin Vocal Academy where the proof
is in the singing. I'm continuing to take these incredible isolated vocal tracks,
I'm doing a tutorial, an analysis, talking about the instrumentation, the recording process, writing
etc. Next up Joey Tempest, the band is called Europe and the song is called "The Final Countdown".
right. Before we get started if you wouldn't mind, please like and subscribe to
my channel that would be cool. I have a singing course, the course is called How to Sing Better
Than Anyone Else. You can find it right here at KenTamplinVocalAcademy.com where I have a free
singing forum of around 25,000 people over there right now talking about how to get good at singing
okay. Now it's interesting because I just came off of doing the band the Scorpions so I guess I'm
doing two European bands today. I try to do , like when I do this I'll do like three or four
back to back in the midst of teaching and stuff and so I just talked about how the Scorpion's
"Still Loving You", you could hardly go anywhere without hearing you know (sings)
right but even more so, even more so, you couldn't go anywhere without (sings)
right and what's funny is this song, I, I, I looked it up, the beginning before the vocal even starts is a
minute and 26 seconds, before the vocal even kicks in. I don't know how many songs could sustain that
but this, this one surely did. Now I also want to talk about Swedish musicians okay.
I know John Norum was the original guitar player in the band now Kee Marcello I think took his place or
was shortly there after. Kee Marcello actually played on one of my records called Wake The
Nations which I had a lot of players on there Richie Cotson, Jeff Watson, you know Doug Aldridge, a
lot of great players on that album but the reason I bring it up is because I've had a chance to work
with a lot of Swedish musicians and they're just great. I don't know what the heck happen, what they're
drinking up there, maybe I do know what they're doing up there or what they're eating but
I know that the Swedish musicians are just phenomenal players, almost all of them just
really, really talented guys so they're really fun to watch, they're really fun to listen to, they're
fun to learn from and I'm not just talking only Yngwie Malmsteen guys I'm talking like
a lot of great Swedish guitar players that are just amazing Mattias Eklundh, like it's just
free kitchen crazy, crazy greats. By the way he also played on that record for, Mattias Eklundh. Anyway
but I wanna dive right in so let's just fire it up man. Here we go. This is "The Final Countdown",
Now it's so cute because I've never tried to sing speak or sing in Swedish so I can
only imagine you know how hard it is though I understand it very well from teaching for,
well I, technically KTVA has only been around 12 years only, you know over a decade but you
know I've taught a lot of players in my bands over the years from doing a lot of touring how
to sing backups to me as I'm singing and I know that in the Swedish language everything is like (sounds)
and everything's closed down really narrow in the sound so (sings) you know you can
hear the accent immediately but he's pretty good at hiding it through the most of it and I know
he speaks you know good English so I'm not trying to, but it's interesting how the interpretation of
the English language is, he did a really good job. Check it out.
(sings) right.
Now we understand obviously it's kind of a, you know an apocalyptic, end of the world, the world is is bust, we're all
getting on the spacecraft and we're leaving earth for some reason is you know kind of what he's,
what he's saying from my understanding. I haven't dug really deep into it. You guys can correct me
you know in, in the, in the, the questions down below but, all right so we have this and then but
it's, it's pretty easy (sings) right. He's not like that crazy on it but the songwriting's
really good and a lot of the Swedish songwriting from the Swedish bands at the time, really good
songwriting. I mean just top-notch stuff. So let's do it one more time.
Good melody.
Okay now there's some nasality (sings)
right. So he brings a lot of mask and a lot of nasality into the sound
and a lot of you know European bands, especially Northern European, German you know up in the Nordic
areas of Sweden, Norway, Iceland you know those bands. They used a lot of nasality in their sounds.
It, it helps a lot to get a lot of high space, high placement for the space like that but overall
after a while it is a little grating so in my course I talk about both things, how to get first
a nice, big round sound and then if you want to employ or use a little bit of nasality you can.
Also they were really handsome guys I mean and then the song "Carrie". It's like all the girls (sings)
right. So you know they had a few songs but they have the swooner songs for the girls so
they're just very handsome guys. They were sort of like the Bon Jovi of Sweden dare I
say that. Anyway and let's continue . I mean Bon Jovi or or Joey Tempest is
probably gonna get mad at me for saying that but that's all right. Anyway here we go.
Okay. A lot of production. I gotta add that.
Now I hate to say this and Abba was guilty of this you know another fantastic
Norwegian or excuse me, Scandinavian band, excuse me Swedish but, there's, there's some
cheesiness to the lyric you know headed for Venus, maybe they've seen us welcome us all
you know. So it was sort of like hey guys let's write a song about you know the end of the
earth and and you know interplanetary travel and whatever and we're gonna throw whatever
English words we can and to try to get them connected and we've seen German bands do this and
and by the way hey I don't speak a bunch of different languages, i understand some
you know some German, I understand some Italian, I understand some Spanish etc but
i don't speak fluent other languages so kudos to them for doing that and being able to do that
so shame on me for like dissing that, I'm not looking to do that. I am just pointing out the
triteness of the actual lyric because I have to be fair about it. We just came off of "Still Loving You"
and, and even though there was a lot of simplicity in the language in that song, there was still some
genius in taking that simplicity and making it where everyone could relate to it, where this is
a little bit more bubblegum for me personally. I'm allowed to say it but the band is killer,
the songs are killer, musicianship's killer, the lyric's a little cheesy for me. Alright let's continue.
All right cool. Now there's nothing extraordinary about the range or anything but just good
placement, really good pitch, good tone you know good, good melody you know everything just sits
really well the, the keyboard line was genius it was just such such a catchy thing that it
really carried the song which was awesome and they did a lot of other songs that were great too so.
Okay let's continue.
(sings) He's kind of got a little bit of hah in there a little bit I like that that's cool.
All right let's continue, big long instrumental break. A long, long instrumental break.
Then it goes back into the chorus again.
Now, okay I'm gonna play it again.
Go to the end.
Okay now I bring this up, I'm trying to point all this stuff out is because
there's not really that much to the song I mean I know it's done like crazy great but I think
the genius of the song for me, maybe the genius of the song for everybody was the repetitive (sings).
Such an epic trumpet clarion call you know sound to everybody to get them to board the plane,
aboard the spacecraft but the song is very repetitive and it just does the same thing over
and over again but it's the repetitiveness that sticks in your mind because they were able to
arrange the song in such a way, it actually made you wanted to hear it again over and over and
over again which sticks in the brain and it's really hard to dislodge that from if you're
(sings) right (sings)
right. You know those little poem, children's nursery rhymes but,
but in the end you know with the musicianship with the you know handsome guys pulling it off, John
Norum on guitar you know you got, again great vocals, good, just all around good band, it really pulled
it across the finish line and was super epic so. I want to do this now I'd like to add the track to this
and Joey Tempest you know I, I saw him twice and he was spot on both times I've only seen him way back
in the day so i never saw him later but he was absolutely spot-on did a great job but let's hear
it with the track so we can kind of get a feel for how epic this really.
So anyway it was cool and you could hear this like in arenas for soccer matches and
you'd hear this you know I mean just kind of everywhere you went that, that that horn line
thing was like everywhere it just was ubiquitous throughout Europe so. Thank you for joining me.
I've got a lot more of these coming your way and definitely stick around for my next video.