Yeah I know... REALLY guilty pleasure for a straight guy like myself.
He is Iceland's gay prince of pop. Paul Oscar (or Páll Óskar Hjálmtýsson, as he's known over here) has been a huge part of the Icelandic music scene for over 15 years. He just released a 2CD/1DVD boxset featuring all his hits from his career. His latest album, "Allt fyrir ástina", was released last year and sold over 10.000 copies in a country of only 300.000 people... He has only once been featured prominently outside of Iceland when he participated in the Eurovision Song Contest in 1997 and shocked housewives around Europe with his stage show.... He didn't get many votes, but back then only 3 countries had televoting, all other countries had special judges... Incidentally, he only got votes from the televoting countries.... But enough about Eurovision....
His myspace: http://www.myspace.com/palloskar
And here are some of his better known videos (locally):
"International" (2007) - this song was selected as the official Icelandic Gay Pride song of 2007.... Remember that in Iceland not just gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgender people participate in the festivities.... People bring their whole family downtown to watch the parade.... Like most his songs, the lyrics are in Icelandic, but the chorus lyrics have an international flavor (pardon the pun):


Betra líf (Better life) (2008) - this is probably one of the "biggest" music videos made in Iceland... Parts of it were used in a commercial for a savings bank (that bank did NOT default in the recent banking crisis)... The choreography is almost Bollywood-ish...



And finally, here's his first music video for the song "Ljúfa líf" (Sweet life) from 1993.... parts of the lyrics are in French, if you're paying attention.... the song is really badly mixed on the original album as evident in the video, but it has been remixed for the new compilation... This one is REALLY cheesy

Thanks for making this thread and exposing me to him.

Only Icelandic music I have on my iPod is Gus Gus, but I'm always open to new sounds. I like Europop, so Pall is interesting to me.

I like "Betra líf." Kind of borderline addictive, I want to click on it a third time. Just sent this to one of my friends. Thanks!

Carlllon said:

You're welcome ... I think it's a shame that Paul Oscar isn't more known outside of Iceland because I truly feel he has the potential to do something big..... and if you've heard the track "Hold You" on the latest Gus Gus album, the male vocal in that song is Paul Oscar.

These three videos I posted probably represent best the music video side of "Palli" (his common nickname over here) but here are two cuts that are always popular on the radio here:
Stanslaust stuð (Non-stop fun) (1996): this cut is consdered a dance classic over here, in the same category as Dee-Lite's "Groove is in the Heart" and MJ's Billie Jean... one of those songs that gets played EVERY weekend at the clubs in Reykjavik:


Þú komst við hjartað í mér (You touched my heart) (2007)
This song used to be just an album cut from his latest album, but went straight to the top when indie rock band Hjaltalín covered it this summer... soon after the radio stations started to play Palli's version... at one point Palli's version was number one and the cover was at number two in the airplay charts.... or was it the other way around? I'm not sure, but both versions have been really popular.
Here's the popular cover (performed live on TV):


And the original (just the song, no official music video):

[Edited 11/10/08 12:22pm]

Hey thanks for these clips. My friend was so surprised when I sent him that clip of Betra lif. He says it's not his favorite Palli song. His personal fave is a tune from around '93 called Ég er bundinn fastur við þig. And from the new album he likes Er þetta the most.

I like Non-stop fun, too. He looks a bit like an Icelandic Ricky Martin in some of the promo pics I've seen.

Carlllon said:

Yeah, both "Ég er bundinn fastur við þig" (I'm tied to you) and "Er þetta ást?" (Is this love?) have been popular on the radio here, although nothing compared to the popularity of "Betra líf" or "Allt fyrir ástina"... He does resemble Ricky Martin a bit, although the difference between them is that Palli has been out of the closet for 18 years.

P.S: Is your friend Icelandic? Just curious, because not many outside of Iceland seem to know Palli, although I do know that many of the hardcore Eurovision Song Contest fans are very familiar with him.

purplehippieonthe1 said:

He is Icelandic. And he was so surprised that I sent him Palli clips. He was like, "who exposed this to you?!" LOL