Kerli – Love Is Dead (2008)
purchase this album (Amazon)

As I’ve often stated in my reviews on my home site, there are many times when the best things you discover via the Internet are the ones you discover by accident. So it is with the CD Love Is Dead by Estonian singer Kerli, which came out this past July.

Mindlessly surfing YouTube one day, checking out spoofs of Daniel Craig and Quantum of Solace (I’m a fan of neither), I happened upon a sampling for the videogame of the same name, which has the theme song “When Nobody Loves You” by Kerli. The song was electric, shockingly new and refreshing, while still containing all the great elements of a classic James Bond theme. Whatever reasoning exists as to why in the world the producers of QoS decided to go with the abhorrent theme by Alicia Keys and Jack White rather than choose this will elude me for the rest of my days…nevertheless, it spurred me on to find out more about this young woman (she’ll be just 22 years old, come February ‘09) and her music.

Kerli Koiv hails from the small Northern European country, with a population just over one million, and depending on whether you believe either Wikipedia or her “official” bio on Island Def Jam’s site, she either didn’t or did win the Eurolaul contest in 2004. While other news sources such as esctoday.com report she was the runner-up to the group Neiokoso, regardless, her considerable talent caught the attention of IDJ scouts and she was signed to the label. Love Is Dead has only tracked a peak position of #126 on the Billboard Top 200 (#2 on the BB heatseekers chart), moved just a bit over 5,000 copies of real CDs in record stores at that point, and its MP3 sales were given a handsome boost by an initial release as iTunes made her “Walking on Air” the free single of the week when the album debuted. (more…)