Verbal slaps

Here petty bourgeois attitudes are subjected to a totally unsentimental thrashing in those rainy minor key tones, which are so much CV's trademark. 
 
Here charter holidays and credit card consumerism are unable to conceal loneliness and meaninglessness. Danes living in Spanish tax havens are subjected to a pitiless verbal going-over in the catchy hit "Costa del Sol" ("Costa del Sol") - a number that we still bawl out even today! But is everyone fully aware of the sarcastic message that lies packed in behind the happy refrain "Costa del Sol where the sun dances"?

Original renewer of the language
It should surely ring a bell when the fun life on the sun coast is characterised as "our nazi, anti-social feeling of togetherness." CV's poisonous pen and pessimism come to expression in an utterly appealing, American-inspired rock sound provided by producer Billy Cross and this album is his most popular and folksy to date. By this point, North Copenhagener CV Joergensen had developed from being a mere Bob Dylan-inspired folk musician at the time of his début in 1974 to become an original, modernistic singer/songwriter with an inventive language and a sharp, critical eye.

Powerful impression 
"Summer's over now/it almost fleeted by/you're left empty-handed and can't keep up/everything goes black/while you stand back here and stare/as yet another dead heat is run with you as stowaway", as CV so elegantly sings in his melancholy romantic number "The Season is Over" ("Sæsonen er slut").

CV's at one and the same time inventive, precise and subtle grasp of language has long since set its indelible mark on Danish music history. His immortal texts have been a source of inspiration for some of the greatest local songwriters in modern times such as Peter Sommer, Jens Unmack, Klondyke and Mikael Simpson, none of whom are afraid of dishing out more or less friendly verbal slaps in the face to the public.

Peter Elsnab is a music journalist and Jesper Nykjaer Knudsen is a culture journalist.