In 2020, Yona (Johanna Rasmus) lay in bed, overwhelmed by anxiety.
She had gone through a divorce, and Yona was broken. On top of that, the COVID-19 crisis and its restrictions were weighing heavily.
These were acute crises, but beneath them lay a longer period of exhaustion.
Yona had been a recording artist for ten years. Throughout her career, everyone from colleagues to critics and fans had praised, admired and celebrated her music.
She was, demonstrably, making good music. It just wasn’t selling.
Yona had lived on a low income throughout her career, and despite hard work, her financial situation showed no signs of easing. Burnout was starting to loom.
One more album still had to be made, and work on it was already under way. Its title would be Uni, johon herään. Yona thought it would be her last.
Then, suddenly, the breakthrough was right in front of her. It just turned out to be a little different from most others.
Käärijä represented Finland at the Eurovision Song Contest in 2023, after which he went on to sell out arenas and tour internationally.
Cheek appeared on the TV programme Vain elämää in 2012, and after that he became not just an artist but an institution.
PMMP released the album Kovemmat kädet in 2005 and rose to massive popularity.
Apulanta released the album Ehjä in 1996, cementing its status as a mammoth of Finnish rock music.
These are just a few examples of breaking through. Suddenly something happens, and an artist or band rises to enormous popularity. It is the alchemy of popular music: no one has yet learned how to systematically turn base metal into gold.
Often, a breakthrough takes time. For example, long-time music industry influencer Gabi Hakanen says that a breakthrough usually occurs around the third or fourth album.
“Establishing yourself in the public consciousness takes time, and a great deal of groundwork is required. At least with the artists I’ve managed since the 1990s, it has quite often happened around the age of thirty, give or take five years,” Hakanen analyses.
However, times and the business have changed to some extent, Hakanen says.
“Today is different, for example in the era of social media culture, where popularity – at least apparent popularity – can be relatively easy to suggest to audiences through those channels. For the most part, however, real popularity is still measured by the number of gigs and live appeal.”
Social media may not have broken many artists on its own, but it has brought them to the attention of record labels. For example, Mirella was “discovered” on TikTok, and after that, in 2024, her second single Timanttei was streamed 35 million times over the course of the year.
Mirella broke through immediately. So did Yona in her time – but in a slightly different way.
In the first decade of the 2000s, social media meant IRC-Galleria and MySpace, the latter of which served as a low-threshold publishing platform for many emerging songwriters. Yona also released her demos there, and Gabi Hakanen, who was working at EMI at the time, came across the songs, became enthusiastic and offered her a deal.
It was an opportunity for which 99.9 per cent of songwriters would sell at least a small piece of their soul. But for Yona, who was raised in a Pentecostal family, the soul mattered. She wondered whether she would be able to realise her ideas freely enough at a major record label. Yona talked about the unexpected opportunity with her friend, DJ and producer Didier Selin.
“Didier was like, ‘heeeey, don’t go there, come to Timmion Records instead’. That felt like a better solution to me. And it was – it was wonderful and unforgettable to make my first album with that group in the basement of the Cable Factory (Kaapelitehdas),” Yona says.
When Yona’s debut album Pilvet liikkuu, minä en was released in 2010, it received a great deal of positive reviews. For example, HS wrote:
“Yona’s singing voice and interpretation are convincing from the opening bars onwards. The emotions come across as genuine and youthful.”
The album won the Best Newcomer Emma Award. It was remarkable, as the record had received hardly any radio airplay outside Radio Helsinki. For Yona, the award came as a big surprise. She did not even know what the Emma Award was.
“I wasn’t interested in pop music at all back then, I only listened to jazz, folk and art music. I even slightly looked down on pop music. I said in an interview that the Emma meant nothing to me,” Yona says, laughing.
“Yeah, I was pretty conceited back then. Well, I guess everyone feels a bit embarrassed about their younger self.”
So Yona did experience a small breakthrough right away. She was simply so good that she could not be ignored. Still, good music alone does not carry you very far.
Niko Kangas says the question is difficult and “anxiety-inducing”: how do you break an artist.
Kangas has been trying to do exactly that for decades – first at Fullsteam as an A&R Director and manager, and today as Head of Export at Music Finland, which focuses on music export.
“If it could be explained and properly analysed, everything would be easy. You can break it down and analyse it endlessly, but in reality there is no recipe,” Kangas says.
“In the past, when the pop world moved more slowly, the analogy of breaking an artist was easier to grasp. If something met a certain level of quality and ticked certain boxes, you could invest €30,000 fairly calmly and see how things developed over the course of a couple of albums. Today, artists generally have much less time,” Kangas says.
He exaggerates to make his point clear:
“Let’s do a few single deals, try what sticks. And if things don’t take off, the artist is dropped.”
What does take off and what doesn’t is largely out of anyone’s control. It can come completely out of the blue.
For example, in 2024 Sony generated good revenue from the band HIM, not because the band released a new album or went on tour, but because a gothic boom happened to emerge on TikTok, prompting people to listen to HIM’s older songs.
According to Kangas, a breakthrough should be approached like a game of billiards: you can’t fully control the game, but you can give it the best possible chance to succeed.
If there is a charismatic, skilled and hard-working artist or band with good songs, the conditions for breaking through must be made as favourable as possible through sales, production and songwriting support. In addition, the artist’s music must not be too difficult, as that kind of music rarely resonates with the masses.
Yona, however, said no to this kind of approach after her debut.
“After the Emma, it was really important to me that the next album would be even more artistic, and that there would be no compromises at all,” Yona says.
The next album, Vaikenen laulaen, was released in 2011. Once again, it was a favourite among critics, but radio stations still failed to warm to it.
The following year saw the release of Vaikka tekee kipeää, ei haittaa, which, according to Yona, was an even more self-directed album. Critics loved this one as well. For example, NRGM, at the time a gatekeeper media for quality music, wrote:
“On her third album, the morning star of hippie schlager achieves something any artist could be proud of: creating a world that could not have been created by anyone else.”
It did not succeed commercially either, but the modest sales figures did not bother Yona. It was wonderful to make the kind of music she wanted to make. It felt like a calling, and when she was able to do it with a great group of people and tour with an amazing 12-piece band, life was good.
Gradually, however, reality began to hit hard. It is difficult to be a performing artist if you don’t have money for stage clothes or makeup.
“It felt strange that everyone appreciated it so much and the critics loved it, yet I was completely broke.”
Something new had to be done. For Yona, that meant entering the Tangomarkkinat competition.
There is a long way from Helsinki’s trendy bars to Seinäjoki in South Ostrobothnia. Yet it so happened that the indie queen of Helsinki was crowned – almost – a tango queen: Yona sang her way to second place at the Tangomarkkinat competition in 2013. After that, she released the album Tango á la Yona.
Yona says the tango experiment stemmed from a growing fascination with schlager music and a dream of singing with the backing of a large orchestra. At the time, she was genuinely enthusiastic about classic schlager music, and tango in particular. She also thought that tango might help her reach a new kind of audience.
The problem was that the tango album was not traditional mainstream tango, but an artistic tango album. Once again, critics loved it. Rumba wrote:
“For Yona, music is a flexible concept, and her career has never rested on a single genre. This is refreshing in Finland.”
The wider audience did not find the album.
“I remember what my booking agent at the time said: ‘If I were making this kind of music in, say, France, I’d have gigs for the rest of my life – but this is Finland, get a job.’”
Often, a breakthrough happens with music that is, at least on the surface, mainstream and very much of its moment. But because the pop business is ultimately inexplicable, breakthroughs can also happen in very different ways.
“Sometimes there are exceptions. And exceptions to the exceptions,” Niko Kangas says.
History offers examples of this. Radiohead’s OK Computer in the 1990s, and especially the highly experimental Kid A, are extremely unlikely hit albums.
Yona continued making music, but mainstream success did not arrive with the subsequent albums Naivi or Jano either.
“Even though Naivi is still, in my opinion, perhaps my best album,” Yona says. Critics continued to be supportive. Soundi magazine wrote:
“The singer’s release pace has been intense (…) Quantity has not replaced quality. Yona’s albums have been good, and on her fifth album the ‘urban forest girl’ continues along the same line of quality.”
Then Yona shifted into a higher gear. In 2018, she moved to a major record label, Universal’s Johanna Kustannus imprint, and released the album 7.
That didn’t lead to a breakthrough either, and at this point not all critics were fully convinced anymore. HS wrote:
“Where Yona’s earlier albums have each clearly followed a single aesthetic line, this album includes a bit of everything. The result is an unfocused whole in an unintended way.”
At this point, Yona began to feel frustrated.
“Competition fatigue really hit hard. If there’s no commercial success and even critical support starts to disappear, that can be a very tough place to be.”
Making ambitious music is no guarantee of a breakthrough. This is unfortunate in a market like Finland, where breaking through is almost a necessity if you want to make a living from your work.
Whether it is music, literature or visual art, the Finnish market is so small that there is only a tiny group of buyers for culture that deviates even slightly from the mainstream.
In recent years, income generation has become even more difficult. In the era of streaming services, culture costs next to nothing, mid-sized venues are disappearing, and radio stations are discontinuing specialist music programmes.
Because the market is small and uncertain, the business side wants to invest in music that is as certain to sell as possible. This leads to repeating what has already been done before, narrowing cultural diversity. Those who have already achieved success do even better, while the margins become increasingly marginalised.
Niko Kangas at Music Finland understands these dynamics well, but he is still not particularly pleased with the situation.
“Music consumption behaviour has moved in a faster and more disposable direction, and the time windows for breaking artists have become shorter. In this way, many talented creators are lost when they are not given enough time.”
Yona understands these dynamics as well. But of course it is frustrating to know you are making good music and still struggling to put food on the table.
“Korkkarit kattoon is a great song and it has its place, and I’m a die-hard Kaija K fan. But it pisses me off that there doesn’t seem to be room for anything else, that everything has to be the same.”
At this point, the story circles back to the beginning: the year 2020. After the album 7, within a few years Yona went through a divorce, a mental breakdown, and the restrictions of the COVID-19 crisis.
At that point, she threw up her hands.
“I was lying in bed and crying. I wasn’t fit for work, but I was still making the upcoming album. I had already let go of everything and thought it would be my last album.”
Then things started to happen.
While Yona was working on her upcoming album Uni, josta herään, she unexpectedly received a major grant.
In addition, a symphony orchestra was brought in for the album recordings, and the sessions went brilliantly – a three-day recording session was completed in just a day and a half.
When the album was released, it received a surprising amount of attention by Yona’s standards. Soon after, Yona received a phone call inviting her to appear on the TV programme Vain elämää.
That, if anything, is a sign of a breakthrough. And it felt incredible.
“I’ve always thought that I would like to be an artist for large audiences. I’ve just never wanted to make the kind of music that would require.”
After Vain elämää, Yona was once again faced with a choice: to become an artist for the mainstream, or to continue on her own path. As she reflected on this, she remembered what her producer Didier Selin had said during the making of her first album.
In 2024, Yona released her most recent album to date, Eden. It was her first album after Vain elämää and could have been a bubbly, commercial pop record packed with hits, sealing her position in Finnish mainstream music.
Eden is not that kind of album. It is an experimental, electronic-driven record.
“I knew it wouldn’t be a hit album. But that didn’t bother me.”
Yona feels that the attention received by Uni, johon herään, her appearance on Vain elämää, and the audience base that had gradually grown over the years were proof that it is possible to go far as a self-directed artist – to break through. Just a bit more slowly. Yona is still not rolling in money, but she no longer thinks of breaking through in terms of commercial success.
“Back when I was making my very first album, Didier told me to look far ahead, to look ten years into the future. Because with this kind of music, you don’t break through in Finland overnight – the breakthrough comes gradually. For me, breaking through means being able to make a living from the art I feel called to create. My breakthrough is that for fifteen years I have supported myself and my band with music that I love making. That makes me truly happy.”
In a way, this is a breakthrough that is even harder to achieve than traditional breaking through, because it has not happened on the system’s terms, but despite them. As Rumba magazine put it in its review of the tango album:
Others do what they dare – Yona does what she feels like.