Up until a few years ago, I wasn’t convinced that I’d end up on the news side of radio. If you’re tuning into a station on a long car trip, you’re probably going to want to jam out to something other than the news (no offense taken, I understand). My college radio station had a rule that every jock had to play at least two “new” songs each show from the meticulously curated CD library. I was all about this rule, and often adjusted the theme of my show to highlight up-and-coming artists.

For what it’s worth, I also spent several years as an assistant reviewing those new artists, so I already knew what I was getting myself into.

Now that it’s no longer a requirement for me to dive into 5 CDs a week and determine what went on the air and what went in the bin, I’ve found it more difficult to get into newer releases. There’s something comforting about the music you listen to in your adolescence that makes you want to blast it on repeat. I like to think of all those tunes as earworms that have buried themselves deep into my subconscious. They’ll come out every so often just to remind me that they’re still around. Those are usually very good days, in my book.

Let’s recap real quick: I don’t listen to a ton of new music, and the song stuck in my head is likely something I heard back in high school and never let go of.

So how in the world is there a song- released this past Friday- that I can’t get out of my head?

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http://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gOia6qznyQ

This is the latest single from Ukrainian electro-folk band Go_A, “Kalyna.” The band posted this description of the track on Facebook along with a 15 second teaser trailer, hours before they released the full track:

“Kalyna (guelder-rose) is a symbol that has been a part of Ukrainian culture since ancient times. Its meanings were transferred through the ages in legends and songs. A broken kalyna tree was a sign of trouble and tragedy; abuse of this tree was a shameful act. Ukrainian people carefully protected it because there was a belief that kalyna grew only next to good people. According to our ancestors, kalyna has a power that brings immortality and can unite generations to fight evil. The song “Kalyna” is a message to the World that should be united for the future of humanity.”

Real quick, for context on the band itself: they shot to fame after performing their song “SHUM” in Eurovision 2021, and have a limited number of tracks available to stream on Spotify and YouTube. The timing of this release couldn’t be better, in my opinion. As the band mentions, kalyna has appeared time and time again in folklore, music, art, literature… you name it. In fact, at the time of writing this blog post, I’m listening to another song about kalyna. Go figure.

The significance of kalyna was especially heightened during WWI. The Ukrainian Sich Riflemen, a battalion within the Austro-Hungarian Army, adopted the song “Chervona Kalyna” (Red Kalyna) as their anthem. And who would’ve thought, over a century later, that another war would bring new meaning to the same melody?

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There’s an energy within every song that Go_A has produced that is contagious. The earworms hanging out in my noggin have latched onto “Kalyna” and aren’t letting go anytime soon. The same thing happened when I heard “SHUM” for the first time. If memory serves me right, it was my most-listened to song on Spotify last year; again, for very good reason. Go_A’s inimitable ability to mix the traditional with the future, breathing new life into old world traditions is what keeps me hooked to their sounds, old and new. Who knows, maybe their “Kalyna” will become the unofficial anthem of the Ukrainian Tractor Brigade.