Norway’s Tooji is back after an absense of over a year, with brand new single ‘Rebels’. The man most famous for representing Norway at the Eurovision Song Contest in 2012 with ‘Stay’, has been working on new material for an age, and now we finally get to hear the first fruits of that labour.
And thankfully – considering how long he’s been deliberating over its creation – ‘Rebels’ is a song that’s more than good enough to justify all that time away.
Tooji himself describes ‘Rebels’ as “dramatic pop-dance, with new organic elements blended in with hard electronica“. His voice is almost unrecognisable from what we’ve heard from his before. And while we had no problem with his voice before – we must say it sounds absolutely incredible now. That’s the biggest standout on first listen.
The song itself is a majestic, grandiose, and theatrical slice of dancepop. Dancepop that’s done a little bit differently. While the Americans collapse under the weight of their now stale and generic take on EDM, the original innovators of the genre from this region come out with a song like ‘Rebels’. It’s fresh, and it sets Tooji up perfectly for what’s potentially going to be a hugely exciting debut album.
And doesn’t he look all cool and stuff in the video?…
