Three years ago, we encountered an album by Norwegian glamour model turned songstress Helene Rask. Normally in Scandinavia when glamour models become pop stars, the results are electrifying – Victoria Silvtedt and Lene Alexandra being two prime examples! So we were expecting big things from Helene Rask too. The album ‘Colours’ didn’t disappoint. It was full of electronica taking the form of pop music, a mixture of up-tempo, mid-tempo, and down-tempo tracks – a perfectly satisfying scandipop album. However, we assumed that she’d hung up her microphone for good when she abandoned any plans of a second album and instead set up her own modelling agency, Rask Models, which provides glamour models to music videos, photo shoots and events.
Thankfully though, she was just biding her time – and evidently, her craft!
As you can see from the video below, she’s back with a new single for 2009 – ‘Venus’ a cover of the Bananarama classic. You’re probably thinking that the world doesn’t need another version of ‘Venus’ (unless you work in the marketing department for Gillete Razors). But whilst there have been many covers of the song bestowed onto the world over the last two decades, none of them have been very good. Enter Helene! What we like about this version is that it’s a late noughties song that actually tries to sound like late eighties music. Lots of pop songs over the last couple of years have adopted the fashionable approach of emulating the eighties synth sound – because it sounds a lot better done now than how it did back then (disclaimer, this opinion is probably down to our considerable youth as opposed any actual fact!). The versions of ‘Venus’ that we’ve heard before have always tried to bring the song up to date, and changed its musical style. But it’s a classic, near perfect song – so Helene Rask’s tribute to it is a much better treat to the ears than everyone else’s rape of it.
And the video is IMMENSE! It’s total cheap trash, and she looks like she’s enjoying every minute of playing total cheap trash!
