Ievan Polkka (song by Hatsune Miku)

"Ievan Polkka," known by its official English title "Eva's Polka," is a Finnish folk song from the 1930s. It was covered in the mid-1990s by the Finnish band Loituma, where it has been viewed over 6 million times on YouTube. In 2007, a cover by Otomania was released featuring vocals by Hatsune Miku. None

Popularity

At the time, a popular meme known as "Leekspin" was a Flash animation using a scene from the anime BLEACH. It depicted the character Orihime Inoue spinning a leek while the fifth verse of Loituma's "Ievan Polkka" played on a loop. Shortly after the animation's release, Ievan Polkka became widely known worldwide among internet users, becoming increasingly relevant over time, as shown by search engine statistics on search terms.
On September 4, 2007, shortly after the release of Vocaloid 2 Hatsune Miku , and riding the wave of Leekspin's popular animation, Otomania released "Ievan Polkka" on Nico Nico Douga . The addictive nature of the original song, as well as the animation of a spin-off version of Hatsune Miku's song (later called Hachune Miku) became extremely popular. Hachune Miku, drawn by Otomania's friend "Egg", also holds a leek. Due to its popularity, Ievan Polkka would become one of the representative songs associated with Hatsune Miku.

Otomania's cover of "Ievan Polkka" quickly became Hatsune Miku's first popular work, leeks became one of Hatsune Miku's most beloved items, and spin-off characters exploded in popularity. This Flash animation proved to be one of the most transformative songs in Hatsune Miku history.

The song was featured in the Hatsune Miku (Mikupa) Live Concert in Tokyo 2011 and is commonly used as a tutorial song in the Hatsune Miku -Project DIVA- series games. It also appeared in Just Dance 2016 (Ubisoft). In the first Project DIVA game, the song was used as a regular song with a considerably simple note diagram. However, in the subsequent Project DIVA games released so far (on multiple console platforms), the song is used as a tutorial, teaching players the basics on how to play the game itself. In the tutorial format, Ievan Polkka is purely instrumental, and its chorus is looped in order to accommodate all the different note varieties the game includes, such as the "Hold" notes. With each release of the Project DIVA games, fans actually look forward to playing the tutorial stage in order to listen to the song again.

Song Information

• Loituma (arrangement)
• Otomania (cover: arrangement)
• Hatsune Miku (cover: vocals)

Words

Published by Warner Chappell Music Publishing Synch Department under JASRAC
JASRAC work code: 0X5-9666-9

Interpretation

The original song can have two interpretations. The first tells the story of a girl who runs away from her mother's house to go to a party, and later returns home with a young man who challenges her mother to stop them from courting her. The second interpretation is that the party is held at the girl's house, and the young man who lives next door decides to court the girl, despite her mother's intense surveillance. The neighbor tried to take the girl back to his house, but her mother tried to stop them.

Miku's cover only sings a small portion of the song, and her version is pure gibberish, the scat segment of the song, where the singers improvise, inventing nonsensical syllables and phonemes, which essentially means she doesn't say a single word that makes sense. There are versions in which she covers the entire song, but the original video, the one based on the song, is a version of the original leek meme, does not, being simply rhythmically and phonetically pleasing to listen to.

Links

YouTube - Loituma's version
Ievan Polka - Wikipedia
Yevan Polka - Wikipedia (Japanese)
Ievan Polkka - Vocaloid Wiki | Fandom
Ievan Polkka - Nico Nico Pédia