As a child growing up in Finland in the 1950s, I heard all the popular songs of the day. We did not have a record player until 1957, and even then we never bought any pop records, as my father preferred classical music and I was getting interested in jazz. But the songs were all around us, and they still haunt me today. Many of them are now available on Compact Discs, and they are played regularly on the radio. Some of them are just Finnish language cover versions of records which were also popular in the USA and UK at the time, such as ‘Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White’ or ‘Only Love Me’. Others are unmistakably Finnish, sentimental waltzes and tangos and rousing comic songs. Whatever, it is obvious that record companies created something that has become a permanent part of Finnish culture.