Abstract
How are gendered identities enabled, contested, and performed through Nordic popular music? Building on relevant approaches in popular music analysis, this article offers an investigation into the function/s of language and musical style in enabling and engendering agency and subjectivity via two case studies in Norwegian popular music.
 Gender and language are crucial factors in this. In a global context of popular music, bands and artists who choose to sing in their local language may be seen to take up marginal positions compared to artists who choose to sing in English, as the choice of language would naturally limit their audience. I argue that this overlooks the efficacy of using one’s local language to express points of view that are relevant on a local level; what is more, it overlooks the possibility of subverting globalized trends and using these to one’s own ends.
 In this article, I offer close readings of Norwegian-language albums by two all-female groups: the hip-hop duo Kuuk (Live fra Blitz) and the electronica duo Skrap (Atlantis). Applying Russell A. Potter’s (1995) concept of the ‘resistance vernacular’ as it has been expanded and operationalized by Tony Mitchell (2004), I contend that the bands’ use of their local language opens their music to a broader set of possibilities when it comes to subverting gender and genre norms at the same time as it enhances the music’s political potential.
 Working in discernible genres enables both bands to create music that expresses a feminist stance; in the case of Kuuk, deconstructing and subverting expectations of gendered behaviour through parodying hip-hop misogyny, and in the case of Skrap, drawing on strategic naïvety to steer clear of gender stereotypes.
Highlights
Popular music, as a global platform of popular culture that is ostensibly available to everyone everywhere, finds itself at the junction of a particular paradox
English frequently appears as the undisputed standard, with all other languages seemingly relegated to the margins
I argue that this marginal position enables performers to resist the streamlining of music, by using their native language, and by extension shaping ideas of gender and subjectivity
Summary
As a global platform of popular culture that is ostensibly available to everyone everywhere, finds itself at the junction of a particular paradox. This in turn opens for a view that resistance vernacular is not limited to language, and encompasses musical style as well as audiovisual aesthetics, all of which feed into artists’ identity politics Against this background, I read a selection of songs by Kuuk and Skrap as resisting sexist stereotypes, to different ends. Her use of dialect situates Kuuk in a context of a number of Norwegian bands, and in an intersection of styles: the broad Northern Norwegian hip hop scene that includes Tungtvann and Sirkus Eliassen, Northern rock groups such as Senjahopen, and rural rap groups such as Side Brok These groups share a dexterity in language that is characteristic of Kuuk, exemplifying a resistance to globalized stylistic traits in popular music that circumvent any simple demands to intelligibility (read: English lyrics) in favour of a broad range of vernacular expressions. As trained and skilled musicians in a Nordic context where one effect of Metoo is the expansion of music spaces to accommodate women’s stories, Skrap use their music to voice experiences that may well be of relevance in broader contexts
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