“Tell me about a complicated man.

Muse, tell me how he wandered and was lost

when he had wrecked the holy town of Troy,

and where he went, and who he met, the pain

he suffered in the storms at sea, and how

he worked to save his life and bring his men

back home …

Now goddess, child of Zeus,

tell the old story for our modern times.

Find the beginning.”

– The Odyssey, Homer, trans. by Emily Wilson, 2018

            An album, like all forms of art, is a performance. In constructing narrative, the artist holds the role of poet speaker, quilting history and character across songs. In a soundproofed studio, the artist pleads into a microphone, manipulates bass, manipulates drums, manipulates synth to echo their prayer. Offering balanced on an altar, hands clasped together, a prayer is spoken to be heard.

Käärijä performs with faith that parishioners will commune with open ears, open hearts. Primarily known for his 2023 participation in Eurovision, listeners might not expect much of the artist. Käärijä’s mainstream songs are beats to dance to, jumping, drunk in the club. Yet his latest shows there’s more nuance to his prayer. People’s Champion is a work of reclamation. The artist’s second collection, the album tells the story of a leaving, a hero’s journey in pursuit of victory. In this way, People’s Champion is reminiscent of The Odyssey; Käärijä’s Odysseus pushes off from familiar shores towards Liverpool, emerges from a ship blessed by the gods in a neon green bolero, and competes in Eurovision. Still, it’s the reflection that brings analysis, the intertextuality that forces the listener to consider the album as something bigger than itself. It’s only through narrative that agency can be reclaimed.

**

The first track begins with a chain of images. Makeup bleeds from a face, a blank canvas muddled with sweat, black weeping from eyes in trenches, foundation rippling through pores, dredging into the topmost layer of skin. A reset. Socked feet cautiously slip themselves into shoes. This process is easy, the shoes puddles of space, the feet swimming in them. The shoes are normal sized, the feet unproportionally small. The lens falters, refocuses. Now, the feet are normal sized, the shoes comically large. A reset. An axe swings, demarcates chicken head from chicken body. The body remembers, legs propelling in panic, blindly stumbling through change. The head watches with dead eyes as the body moves on instinct, only stops when the corpse crashes into a tree. A reset. A man, unprepared for the journey ahead of him, continues from a sense of dedication to the self. This too will be a reset. This too will be something you ache to watch.

In “Cha Cha Cha” Käärijä is fractured. When he competes, he sings of times where he changes himself. Swinging the body to his own beat, he deconstructs and redefines. The sober self is solitary, lacks sustenance, lacks substance. Hands raised, he mimics downing a Piña Colada. The crowd screams. It’s only after a night of drinking when Käärijä transforms, morale rising, and is able to relate to those around him. Relaxed, the concerns of the world wash over him. Hands raised, he dumps a bottle of champagne over his head. The amber water turns him gold.

**

After ten years, Odysseus, clever and deceiving, wins the Trojan War by miming defeat. The Greeks build a 25-foot-tall hollow horse as an offering to Athena, leaving it by the gates of Troy. Odysseus knows that the Trojans will become overwhelmed by their need to be the most loved by the gods, knows that they will drag it within their city limits to lay it beside their altars, unaware of the Greeks lying in wait inside. At nightfall, the soldiers will pull themselves from the horse’s belly, will follow Odysseus, raider of cities, and Troy will burn. 

The Trojan’s temples will go with it. The gods, invigorated by bloodshed but enraged at the burning of their own houses of worship, will blame Odysseus. His punishment will be time.

**

Käärijä doesn’t win Eurovision. We both know this and don’t. Instead, the album brings us to a body broken and weary. Käärijä is willing to do anything, joints displacing themselves to the beat. This, he tells himself, is in pursuit of something bigger, is a way of defining the self as a success before the attention scatters. Pain is inherent to the journey. His body bends, cartilage and tendons displaced, as he contorts himself into the shape demanded of him. His body aches; his muscles spent. He treats the body as sacrifice. This, he tells himself, is only the beginning.

**

The Odyssey begins near its end. After days of sailing alone, his men long dead, Odysseus reaches the Phaeacians. When they mistake him for a god, he sighs: “In pain, I am a match for any man. / Whoever you may know that suffers most.” They welcome him, bathe him, lay him into soft beds. Athena changes him, cloaking the pain, to create someone stronger, someone more reliable. Standing before the Phaeacian nobles, a bard sings the story behind the strategy of the Trojan horse, of Odysseus’ plan of deceit argued against Achilles’ plan of sheer force. The memory holds weight. Odysseus holds his cloak over his face to mask his tears.

It’s here that the hero recounts his voyage, details each step to his audience. It’s through Odysseus’ tongue, through the perspective of “I” and “we,” that the journey unfolds. Surrounding him, the Phoenicians remain silent, faces turned towards the story.

**

Alone, Käärijä is in a club. The lights are strobing, oscillating between overexposed flashes of light and synthetic darkness. Champagne has immersed him. He stands on tip toes to keep his head above wine, watches the lights refract off the bubbles. The club is closing. Käärijä knows this but has been doomed to party, craves the steady beat of a song bled through speakers. His world is wide, has recently expanded. He knows that someone, somewhere must be dancing and drinking and singing. He just needs to find the right contact. He balances his phone above the champagne’s surface, fingers moving quickly across the screen. No new notifications, no responses to his many texts. The bouncers ask him to leave. Käärijä cannot bring himself to tuck the body between fitted sheet and quilted duvet; regardless, the party ends. Alone, Käärijä stands outside of a club.

**

Embedded in narrative, Odysseus asks his men to strap him to the ship’s mast. Circe has told him that the Sirens’ song will be enticing, will manipulate the body to betray the person, will turn the wine-dark sea red with his blood. Their song will fall on mostly deaf ears, his men packing theirs with malleable wax, but Odysseus, master mariner, wants to listen. As the Sirens swim alongside the boat, they promise the hero closure. They too know of what happened in Troy, are familiar with ascribing language to experiences. Their offering is one of kindness, of companionship. They will take him in their arms, processing his trauma. Under their influence, the hero cannot hear the hollow timbre in their voice, cannot understand the trap. He imagines not being alone in the grief of failure. Straining, Odysseus forces his skin against the ropes containing him. They leave dents, coiling around his body like veins.

**

Käärijä says he needs a break. The music lies in wait, cycling through the same notes. He turns to his therapist for advice. Across the table, closest to the microphone, the therapist’s voice holds the foreground. Käärijä slouches in the chair, the sound reverberating as negative feedback, as the therapist chastises him for being late. Käärijä sighs, picks at the flesh around his fingernails. Shifting awkwardly, the therapist reminds him of where they had left off last time: evergreen burnout and childhood traumas. Here, the therapist sighs. He asks Käärijä about his dreams, but before Käärijä can respond, the therapist clogs the air. This job, he explains, isn’t his true passion. He cuts the session short. Käärijä tries to schedule a time for the following week, but the therapist is booked: a tee time with himself. Käärijä snorts in frustration. The therapist recommends that he get a real job.

**

Halfway through his journey home, Odysseus travels to the Underworld. This movement isn’t physical but spiritual, the body remaining behind while the mind shifts. A trench is filled with water and wine and blood, with milk and honey, with the ingredients required to build life. He prays, giving shades the power to speak. Familiar friends flit by before Teiresias, the blind prophet who saw the fall of Oedipus before others, greets him. The spirit bows his head, sipping from the trench, the blood wine invigorating him. Teiresias traces Odysseus’ path towards reunion: when starving, stomach aching, he isn’t to eat Helios’ cattle; when returning home, he will be plagued by suitors trying to fill his spot; when his journey ends, victorious, he will live a quiet life, and his community will bless him. Comforted, Odysseus, son of Laertes, shifts his attention to the shade of his mother, longing to speak with her. She does not recognize him. Teiresias explains – it’s the blood wine that allows the dead to rejoin the living, the metallic seeping into the acidic that reminds the dead of what it feels like to be alive.

**

Again, Käärijä is alone. Again, images. A balloon bursts, falling from blue to yellow, sky to desert. The landscape quickly absorbs foreign latex, the wind shifting, burying it in the sand. A reset. A body recenters itself, takes in only what it needs to survive. The mind bans smoking, bans drinking. The body stands amongst mountains, eyes closed, but can’t remember how to breathe. A reset. A four-leaf clover is enshrined as idol. The clover is prayed upon, praised. Regardless of action, all constructs of luck belong to the clover. The body holding it is stripped of agency. All success is held between four petals. A reset. Sand dug into eyes, the images go unseen, but language creates a picture from the negative. When forced to move, the body remembers.

**

Käärijä dug a trench, poured in water and champagne, milk and honey. He climbed inside, stripped himself, cut himself, used the body as sacrifice, his blood for lamb’s blood. For this, he received second place. But the body had already become an object, something used to further the ends to a means. Käärijä realizes that the flesh is more profitable than the mind, that the only form of art that anyone’s willing to consume is his form. This, he accepts. The body is slowly unraveled, tightly wrapped bands of fabric loosening. How many different ways are there to reclaim a body? Käärijä chooses incantation, elects to spell out truth. The music builds, pops. Käärijä is screaming, growling, teeth gnashing, fists slamming. True art is something to be communed with, is something to be felt. Sex is something to be bought. Still, money is the metric of success. He sells what will sell. Käärijä sits in a trench to see who will drink.

**

When communing with the dead, Odysseus waits for Achilles. Blood wine at his feet, he watches as the hero emerges from trees of asphodel, floating towards the man he fought alongside in Troy. Odysseus affirms that his name has outlasted his body, a reputation maintained throughout death, acknowledges that the dead must view him as royalty. He cannot picture Achilles truly alone, needs to imagine a reputation maintained by shades. Achilles is sullen, would rather be a housemaid in life than a prince in death. Later, once Odysseus’ journey is over, body tucked between mattress and duvet, Agamemnon consoles Achilles, tells him that his name lives on among the living, an eternal reputation. The living comfort the dead with death after life. The dead comfort themselves with life after death.

**

Käärijä returns to the club. This time he is not alone, is surrounded by shades ogling, scanning for someone shaped like sex. Käärijä fades into the crowd, becomes a conglomerate of “us.” At home, he unweaves, momentarily becoming an individual. His DMs are clogged with dick picks. This intrusion is glossed over, is not given time to process. Time has run out; he is forced from his home, needs to return to the club again. Here, he meets someone. This could be love, could only be lust. Käärijä is willing to try anything. Still, he knows, deep down, that in the early hours of morning, he might dig the sand from his eyes to an empty bed. He tells himself that he doesn’t mind. He doesn’t leave the club.

**

Odysseus faces his last trial at sea when Poseidon maroons him on Calypso’s island. The goddess offers him immortality, weaves promises of the body sustaining, of flesh remaining soft, of skin only touched with admiration. Odysseus resists. The hero remembers the life he had before the war; the easy curve of Penelope’s neck, the gentle embrace of his son’s arms as two pieces clicking together. He sits at the shore crying, his briny tears merging with the grey salt sea, making his voyage home microscopically longer. Pain is an exchange, is a conduit to pre-war domesticity. After seven years, the gods acquiesce, forcing Calypso to provide him safe travel. He hurries towards his ship, constructed of his own hands. He trusts the sea, the force that washed him ashore, to bring him home.

**

Still here, still the club. It has always been the club, always will be the club. Again, Käärijä’s not alone, has made a friend solely through emotion, through enthusiasm. They drink and know each other. He and the friend do not have a shared language, so they invent, creating sounds, a vocal beat to move to. In storytelling, they collaborate, but Käärijä is cursed to relay summary; he is forced to party at all times, in every place. The friend is able to enact movement. He speaks of the world outside of the club. Käärijä dances in the background.

**

In epic narratives, heroes are known through epithets. Odysseus is noble Odysseus, is resourceful Odysseus, is great-hearted Odysseus. Odysseus, son of Laertes, raider of cities, loved by Zeus, is the great teller of tales, the great tactician, the master mariner. The poet speaker, responsible for remembering the narrative, needed signal clues. The epithet made each character distinct, made them memorable through titles earned by their actions. An epithet shows that someone is worthy of being remembered, that their story bears weight.

**

Käärijä is proud of himself. Silver medal around his neck, he reflects on the journey itself. He had left for Eurovision with unwavering support from his mother, from his fans, from himself, confident in his abilities. The competition itself had been overwhelming, the number of bodies compressed into the same space, eyes pointed towards him. Their mouths moved, but he couldn’t make out the words, a Finnish mind unable to shift into English. In his retelling, he omits the score, refuses to rank himself. Instead, he won’t be bent to defeat. Back straight, eyes looking towards the future, Käärijä underscores his new title: People’s Champion. While Eurovision’s jury had deemed the song not good enough, the audience had praised him, awarding him the international popular vote. It’s this victory through which Käärijä wants to be remembered.

**

After 20 years, Odysseus arrives home. It’s his storytelling that brings him back, his ability to shape the past into something persuasive. His song, told before firelight, had inspired the Phaeacians to lay him on a ship beside gold and gems, sailing him back to Ithica. He knows that the journey is far from over, that home can only be reached by reclaiming his position from the suitors that had tried to replace him. Disguised as a beggar, transformed by Athena, Odysseus infiltrates the den of his own domesticity, biding his time at the lowest rank. When Penelope holds a contest for her hand, impossible to all but her husband, Odysseus is the only one who can string his old bow. He shoots all the targets. He pivots. He shoots all the suitors. Those who had clamored to fill his space, who were eager to replace his power, clot the palace floor.

Hours pass. Penelope recognizes him, drags him to their bed. Odysseus knows that this peace will be short-lived, knows that the island will revolt upon discovering the death of their best young men. The next day, the city is cloaked in mourning, the bodies anointed and buried. Odysseus is accused of killing everyone he encountered – first his crew, then the suitors. The Ithacans attack Odysseus and his family. Their defense is quick, blood spilling, painting the inside of armor red. Athena, blessed with foresight, pleads with Odysseus; any unnecessary bloodshed will anger Zeus. Hesitantly, Odysseus drops his weapons. His people, persuaded by the goddess, bless him.

**

Käärijä becomes an imprint of Odysseus because every hero’s journey is an echo of The Odyssey. In this version, the artist understands that the stakes are different, mentioning in the first track that his Homer would be yellow, would be piloted by human hands. Still, Käärijä has something to fight for, a desired end goal bigger than Eurovision. People’s Champion is about Käärijä bringing himself together again. Comparison builds legitimacy. A body cannot be reclaimed until it’s deemed worthy.

A retelling needs to include a breaking. It’s the deviations that emphasize the absence, that shape the thesis of the narrative. For 20 years, Odysseus traveled thousands of miles to return home. Käärijä transverses across emotional distance. He becomes lost in his understanding of himself, in the division between the self and the persona. He defines himself by outside metrics; he needs to be seen as an artist, as someone who contributes towards a body of work, but viewers only want his body. Odysseus is punished with time. Käärijä requires it. It’s time that leads him through the grief of the loss, time that teaches him acceptance. Home becomes a space where Käärijä is able to celebrate his past, honoring what he did instead of what he didn’t.

While the exposure of Eurovision can propel careers forward, the competition can be a difficult hole to climb out of. Viewers became accustomed to the Käärijä that strutted in Liverpool. For months, he would only perform in the lime green bolero. He produced four remixes of “Cha Cha Cha.” His social media was flooded with comments declaring that he should have won, that the structure of Eurovision prohibits alternative music from winning, that true artists will never get the recognition they deserve. At home, Käärijä felt trapped within the commodification of performance. In an interview for Paper, he notes: “In Finland I feel like a celebrity, but in Europe I feel like an artist.”

This isn’t to say that the album is without its faults. In “Takavoltti,” in “Ruoska,” in “Autiomaa,” in “Sex=Money,” Käärijä shifts from trying to process the complex trauma of losing agency over oneself to immediately reclaiming the past in “People’s Champion.” Without an effective transition, this feels jarring, the narrative missing one last beat to bring things together. In turn, the emotional development feels incomplete. For eleven tracks, Käärijä weaves narrative into rising beats, tricks the listener into gleefully dancing through. He hides his pain in a hollow horse and leaves it by the gates of Troy. At night, the hurt breaks through, the city aflame. This too is a type of incantation. Käärijä forces the listener to sing along, to take his truth into their lungs unknowingly, and breathe life into them. This body can only be reclaimed through possession, but possession begets reclamation begets acceptance. Käärijä takes our bodies as we have taken his. He uses our mouths to articulate a truth tucked deep inside. We believe it only because it’s been worked into our skin.

**

At the end of The Odyssey, when Athena commands Odysseus to put down his weapons, the hero has to beg his body to stop. Despite traveling for two decades, despite soaking his body in cold pain, Odysseus only truly feels invigorated behind a blade. Rationally he knows that listening to the goddess is the only way to true victory, that after falling so close to home, he cannot risk angering yet another god. He swallows his dissent. Pain returns to its places of permafrost. He drops his sword.

This too is called acceptance.