The Singles Jukebox

There’s life after Idol. For instance, thirteen years into his career, this Finnish finalist makes his Jukebox debut…

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Will Adams: “Hanuri” seems built for global appeal — it’s a song in Finnish that has splashes of Latin pop, EDM flourishes, and a general K-pop energy about it — but Antti Tuisku and his thin voice don’t rise to that level of world domination. If only he could be as interesting as the video’s choreography.
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Ashley John: Antti Tuisku’s career is impressive: ten albums in his thirteen-year career, all of them breaking into at least the top 5 on Finnish charts. “Hanuri” is one of the few singles coming out of 2017, and it gets swallowed trying to merge too many concepts into one track. Between the quick tempo, accordion, and trite lyrics, the parts for a hit are there but they don’t total up into anything memorable. 
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Edward Okulicz: Antti Tuisku started out as a Timberlake wannabe, then did a great U-turn, producing one downright superb album (2006’s New York, which if you ignore the Finnish language sounds like a sequel to Madonna’s Confessions on a Dance Floor, yes, that good), then ran away from that just as quickly, and went through a phase of making a bunch of ridiculous low-budget, low-quality landfill pop with cheesy, atrocious videos made with blithe ignorance of Tuisku’s complete lack of traditional sex appeal. Now he’s trying to get a Latin pop pastiche into your ears by grinning at the genre until it gives up and goes “why not, it’s worked for Bieber.” But it doesn’t work with his voice, which is too darned thin to do anything really. Other than him, it’s a good try, but all I take away from it is Boyat’s bit, and girls slapping his buttocks from the video. His tacky phase continues, and it’s a shame.
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Iain Mew: One of those songs that sound in themselves like proof their singer is a star somewhere, because it seems like the most plausible route to the confidence that underlies its chorus. Without being under direct influence from that stardom though, the bigger competing effect is that that of the song sounding like adequate R&B-pop with an accordion inadequately wedged in.
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Stephen Eisermann: If my translation is correct, this song is about an accordion which I think is a metaphor for something sexual. Yeah… but hey, Antti has a great voice for pop music and the beat kicks, so I’m all for it. Not enough good can be said about the chorus, which carefully avoids the common pitfalls of pop music by remaining relatively calm and not overpowering listeners with a thousand different riffs/sounds. The accordion plays well, too, and the sensual way that Antti repeats “heavenly” in the chorus actually fits the mood of the song well. Also, this song sounds so much like a Spanish song or a song that would do well in Mexico, so somebody should get on that translation real quick — or have Maluma hop on a remix. Maybe both. 
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Alex Clifton: I am a sucker for tunes with accordions, although I can’t say I’ve heard a lot of EDM/accordion music. The instrumentation makes it stand out from the mish-mosh of dance music I’ve heard this year, and Tuisku’s voice carries the song well. It’s a bit earnest and dorky, but that’s refreshing to hear rather than many of the less-than-swaggering songs we’ve seen in 2017 (looking at you, Liam Payne). I’d spend my summers in Finland for this.
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