Midsummer Glad Song

Hyvää juhannusta - happy midsummer! 🍓 🔥 Not to be a bummer, but it’s been a season of loss and radio silence – suurin suru on sanaton* – so even more special to have a few of life’s wild and sometimes bonkers delights to recall the sweet in the bitter: the Paralympics (more on that later), Eurovision 2026 (where the bonkers comes in), and now this little slice of wonder bread from Wales (that’s the country, not the mammals).

*The greatest sorrow is wordless.**

**Except on the actual radio, still had to do the job there. 😊 📻

I’ve been researching North Wales for a project I’m working on and stumbled across the Johns’ Boys choir from Rhosllannerchrugog, near Wrexham of Red Dragons fame.  Below is their 2023 audition for Britain’s Got Talent, and it’s a shiver machine – with weepy judges and spectators and even the rare thumbs up from Simon Cowell, which is sort of like sighting a pangolin or finding unblemished green beans at a grocery store.

It’s not just the witchcraft of live music, magic which the best performances share with an audience – inviting us in and transporting us on the euphoric wave of harmonising as a group (and as a former choirgirl, orchestra dork and jock, I can testify that’s a high like no other except scoring in sport)… it’s this gorgeous glimpse of positive masculinity, of male power and joy in its most pitch-perfect form: voices raised in a song of love.

Enjoy the goosebumps. 🪿

The heavenly Johns’ Boys Welsh male voice choir sing Calum Scott’s “Biblical” in their 2023 audition for Britain’s Got Talent (video provided to YouTube by Britain’s Got Talent).