In an otherwise unremarkable place called Kärleken -pronounced like "shar-lik-kan"- located near Halmstad, the capital of Halland län, on the Swedish west coast south of Göteborg, there are the usual assortment of retail stores and businesses with the area's name in them: pizza, pub, church, corner store, et al.
But on Valentine's Day, enterprising TV reporters, especially those with a yen for asking questions about looking for love in all the wrong places, are keen to flock to a place whose very name means love - Kärleken.
It's about what you'd expect in such a story on such a day, with lots of puns, but TV4 reporter Anton Svendsen is thorough about getting responses from young and old -and very young- about LOVE.
http://www.tv4play.se/nyheter/
What better place to pair that video with than a place as diametrically opposed to the life in Kärleken as the fictional Houston in the 1980's of Bud and Sissy Davis, John Travolta and Debra Winger in Urban Cowboy?
That film was the cultural tsunami that rolled across America and presaged the Country Western music phenomenon that led to a New York City radio station being the number one C&W radio station in the country.
It's weird that in all the various media stories I've ever seen on TV or read about regarding what the 1980's were really like, that sudden shift in musical tastes ALWAYS gets shortchanged, or is shown in a ridiculous fashion.
No Urban Cowboy then, no Shania Twain years later.
Just saying...
Johnny Lee - Looking For Love (from the "Urban Cowboy" soundtrack, 1980)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MnU6p3sGSw
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News stories from TV4 Halland
http://www.tv4play.se/nyheter_och_debatt/nyheterna_halland
