E-type Always Beats Duke Ellington

So we published and let anyone edit our corporate Spotify playlist.

We had some great things on it, like Henri Salvador's Mon Jardin d'Hiver, Tina Arena's Je m'appelle Bagdad and From Gagarin's Point of View with Esbjörn Svensson Trio, EST. Great stuff indeed. Also some Sinatra, Chet Baker and of course some Duke Ellington. Very Mr Green!

What do you think happened when we published our corporate playlist for anyone to edit and listen to?

Yes, someone replaced Duke Ellington with E-type. Then also added Lisa Miskovsky, Atomic Swing and Sator. Sator!

This is no major surprise. If you check out the most played tunes on Spotify, the Swedish eurotechno star E-Type is top 3 on the playlist. However, we thought our readers had some taste and could distinguish Duke Ellington from E-Type in style. But no. On the Internet, your real taste in music is disclosed. And it's not Duke Ellington.

I have some history with E-type.

Many years ago I actually met Martin "E-type" Ericsson. This must have been 1995. Perhaps as early as 1994. I was with the Swedish branch of IDG at the time. But that was not the reason for meeting E-type. In my spare time I designed and maintained the home page of Swedish major rap group Just D. Just D was the first group to rap in Swedish and consisted of a bunch of grown-up Östra Real students including Wille Crawford, Gustave Lund and Peder Erneroth (sp?). The assignment was arranged through Jack Hansen, today a respected copywriter, then fan club manager to Just D.

Anyway, I designed and maintained the Just D web pages and this was kind of a big thing back in 1995. Today, it seems a bit silly to do a web page for a pop group, but this was considered one of the major homepages in Sweden and it was often discussed and rated in magazines. We also produced a computer game published on CD-ROM and some other crazy things.

This made E-type wanting to meet. I am not sure whether it was his idea or he got my name from elsewhere. He wanted a web-page as well. I met him during daytime at the rock-club Gino (since long discontinued). E-type was a very plain man during daytime (no explosions at all), and very tall. On his side was Cathrine Hardenborg. His at the time-girlfriend. She was by far the most beautiful woman I met in person. I was 21 or something and just could not help myself staring. Not at E-type, mind you. Anyway, I never got to do E-type's web page. He wanted me to do it for free. But to me Just D and E-type was something very different. Just D was a smart and clever group, even though commercial. E-type was just E-type. At least to me at the time. But with a beautiful girlfriend. However, she was not beautiful enough to convince me to do the E-type web page for free. I wanted a (still) substantial amount of money to it.

We parted.

Instead my close friend (we did not know each other at the time) Mr Urban Petterson, founder of Wemind, took the assignment. He was at Spray at the time and E-Type was a potential high-profile client that would draw a lot of attention. Spray Interactive Agency did a great job and E-type got a great web page.

Whether E-type paid or not, I still do not know. And now he is on Mr Green's corporate Spotify playlist!

On the Internet, E-Type always beats Duke Ellington.

Mikael Pawlo
Managing Director
Mr Green