JP Leppäluoto has always wanted to be a rock star, but singing live to a million viewers is still a tough place

Vocalist JP Leppäluoto Grab a coffee at a lunch cafe in Helsinki’s Vallila.

It’s a Tuesday in October, and The song of my life – program’s band rehearsals in a nearby factory building have ended a moment earlier.

This week we are working on a classic by the machine music group Depeche Mode Enjoy the Silence.

Leppäluoto admits that performing the song live on television, to well over a million viewers, excites him “absolutely like hell”.

“I usually always have the feeling before a bet that why the hell have I gotten myself into this mess. But fortunately, the reward is always much greater afterwards.”

Alder credit started The song of my life as a star soloist in the fall of 2021. Few viewers of the program had heard his name before.

Katja Ståhlin however, the music entertainment program he hosted made him a television star and a public figure known to the entire nation.

Leppäluoto says that he has noticed this concretely while moving around in grocery stores and public places. People are left staring sensitively.

Läppäluoto seems troublesome.

“I do understand that publicity is an inseparable part of our profession. However, for me it is a necessary evil. I could get along without it,” he says.

No Alpäluoto I still get sick of all the attention. He only feels flattered when people come to tell him how much a song he performed has meant.

For the same reason, he says he agreed to join My life to the song. The focus of the program is music.

Leppäluoto laughs that he has been asked to participate in several reality shows in the past few years. He has refused without exception.

“For example, I don’t see the need to go to a tropical island to survive for a month, when there’s such a slim guy anyway and he’s a bit so and so with his eating.”

Last in Leppäluoto jumped into other big boots when he became the permanent soloist of the band Yö.

Leppäluoto says it still feels amazing and wild.

Not everyone has digested the choice. In the opinion of many Yö fans, the band should have been terminated by the original soloist and band founder Olli Lindholm’s with death.

Lindholm died of a ruptured aorta in February 2019.

The use of the name Yö has also been criticized in other ways. Not a single original member plays in the band.

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“The music of the night is much bigger than its creators combined.”

Alder credit says that maybe it’s not worth comparing the current lineup to the orchestra led by Lindholm. The intention is not to replace or imitate anyone.

He sees the band’s activities first and foremost as nurturing heritage.

“The music of the night is much bigger than its creators combined. I think it must be allowed to ring. However, the gang votes with their feet.”

A ROCK STAR. That’s the kind of person Leppäluoto has always wanted to be.

The first band experiments began at the end of elementary school, inspired by Kiss and other favorite bands of the early 1980s.

Leppäluoto vividly remembers his debut gig. It happened in the cage storage of the family’s apartment building.

Friends and a few girls they knew from school had arrived to watch the concert, whom the early-teenage Raahela boys wanted to impress.

“The gig was interrupted when I was asked to eat.”

Dream rock stardom began to materialize a decade later as the frontman of the gothic metal band Charon.

The band signed a record deal with the Danish Emanzipation Productions in 1997 and began to gain a foothold in the domestic music market.

From the single released in 2001 Little Angel a small-scale hit was formed, which played on radio frequencies and in the goal line of the hockey program.

A year later, Charon was hired as the opening act for Nightwish’s European tour.

“I remember thinking that nothing can stop this anymore. It was an immortal feeling.”

in Finland there was a huge metal music boom in the middle of the 2000s.

With Lord’s Eurovision win, heavy rock had become mainstream, and heviklises found their way to the most special places.

”Katri from Helena hatched a heavy lady”, beamed Seura magazine on its cover.

In a few years, however, the enthusiasm waned. At the same time, the up-and-coming career of the band Charon was interrupted. The band played their farewell concert in the summer of 2011.

“It was decided that it would be better to put the band in a package than to end the friendships once and for all. It was worth it,” says Leppäluoto.

Läppäluoton life has been busy in recent years. And the changes are by no means ending.

In January, Leppäluoto and her husband will have their first child together.

Leppäluoto says that he is “concerned about it”. He states that he is living the best time of his life and that he is a changed man in many ways.

An important step towards a more balanced life was giving up intoxicants a good ten years ago. Everyday life no longer revolves around one’s navel and drinking.

“It feels great. You couldn’t have expected something like this until a few years ago, that you would still be a father in your old days,” says Leppäluoto.

“At this age, you approach these things in a completely different way than when you were a young man. At the time, he was confused by everything, and wondered if I was into this. Now you know that it really is.”

What would you tell your 20-year-old self?

“Take it easy, all the great things are just coming.”

Correction 28.11. at 9.15: JP Leppäluoto joined the Charon band in 1995, not 1992.