Peter Bjorn and John are a Swedish rock band formed in Stockholm in 1999, named after the first names of the band's members: Peter Morén, Björn Yttling and John Eriksson, known in his solo work as Hortlax Cobra. Yttling also worked as producer for the band's first four albums.
members: Peter Morén, Björn Yttling, John Eriksson
formed in: Stockholm
labels: Wichita Recordings, Kobalt Label Services
genres: indie rock, indie pop, neo-psychedelia, psychedelic rock
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Morén and Yttling began playing music with each other while in school. They shared an interest in bands such as The Stone Roses and Ride, and would draw inspiration from acts they heard on the radio while growing up, including Depeche Mode, Fleetwood Mac and OMD. They are also influenced by, but not interested in replicating, classic '60s baroque pop, power pop and new wave. Their first band Piggy In The Middle released the album Images & Distorted Facts in 1997 before disbanding after Morén and Yttling moved to Stockholm, whereupon they met Eriksson in 1999. Their first gig as Peter Bjorn and John was an unsuccessful one aboard a boat in Stockholm; their expectations were not high from the start, as they "just wanted to make good music...
"Young Folks" is the first single from Swedish band Peter Bjorn and John's third album, Writer's Block (2006). The single features Victoria Bergsman as a guest vocalist.
The song received generally positive reviews from critics and performed well in the record charts, reaching the top 40 in Canada, the Czech Republic, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, and the United Kingdom.
By the time Peter Bjorn and John began working on their third album Writer's Block, the band had reached a crossroads. Their previous album Falling Out had failed to meet their expectations, leading them to consider disbanding. "We talked about actually splitting up during that period," drummer John Eriksson recalled in a 2016 interview with Song Exploder. "We said, 'Okay, let's make one more record. But if no one wants to release this on a proper label, then whatever.'" The new album was recorded on a low budget in bassist Björn Yttling’s modest studio space in Högalid, Stockholm.
The song first attracted notice on websites such as Myspace and YouTube, and was used in a number of European commercials and television shows. Since mid-2007, the song has earned extensive airplay on American radio, most notably on dance radio outlets like KNHC/Seattle, KNGY/San Francisco and Sirius Satellite's The Beat. It is notable for being a popular song with whistling (the whistling was originally added in as a placeholder for another instrument).
The animated video for the song was directed by Ted Malmros with animation by Graham Samuels. The video starts off with Peter and Victoria sitting in a park, on a bench. Peter teaches Victoria how to whistle. Then the video switches over to them both sitting in a bus where the song starts. Throughout the video, scenes of the band playing the song can be seen and eventually the video ends with a big party where everybody "seems to disappear".
"Young Folks" has made numerous appearances in media, including in the pilot episode of the television series Gossip Girl, and in advertisements for UK home improvement retailer Homebase from 2009 to 2014, and Google Nest in 2017, in which the product's natural language processing was demonstrated by the phrase "play that hipster song with whistling." It also was part of the tracklist in the video games FIFA 08 and FIFA 23.