With a flip phone in your pocket, false eyelashes slightly askew, and a group of friends heading to the legendary nightclub Onnela – this is how many remember Finland's nightlife from the early 2000s. Now, these colorful party memories have been immortalized in the music video for "Royal Onnela", a collaboration between Emilia Ex and DJ Oku Luukkainen.
The video is something out of the ordinary: instead of staged scenes or actors, real moments from fans’ own cameras take center stage. The images were submitted by people who partied at Onnela clubs around Finland during the 2000s, with both Emilia Ex and DJ Oku Luukkainen contributing selections from their private albums. The ambition was to convey the genuine feeling from the time – something Emilia Ex says could not have been recreated by re-enacting scenes. She suspected there were certainly hundreds of others, just like herself, who had saved similar memories – and the response proved her right.
The journey to "Royal Onnela" took off in early 2026, when Emilia Ex released a Finland-Swedish cover of KATO’s international hit "Turn The Lights Off". The video quickly spread and fans demanded an official release. On June 26, 2026, the song was released in collaboration with DJ Oku Luukkainen. Since then, the track and its various versions have garnered over three million views on social media and streaming services. The song’s name is a direct reference to the iconic Onnela nightclub chain, the symbol of Finnish nightlife in the 2000s.
The song and video bring back an era when party snapshots were taken with digital cameras or the first camera phones – filled with dance floor scenes, friends caught in the flash, and nights that stretched well past midnight. "When I heard the audience sing along to the chorus at the first gig, it felt a bit like dancing in Onnela again," Emilia Ex recounts. That feeling guided the entire process behind the music video, and through fans’ pictures, she believes the team truly succeeded in conveying the spirit of the time.
In the summer of 2026, Royal Onnela was performed at festivals such as Jysäri and Tampere City Festivals, where the audience sang along to the infectious chorus. The live performances have cemented the song’s position as a contemporary nostalgia anthem that unites several generations of partygoers.
The project brought together an experienced team: melody and original lyrics by Alexander Perls, Finnish lyrics by Emilia Rinne (Emilia Ex), production by Kalle-Aleksi Nissinen and Oku Luukkainen, and final mastering by Esko Soinne.