Tag: Emmelie de Forest

Tim: Her off winning Eurovision, with another somewhat different sound for you.

Tim: Right, first off, how rubbish do you have to be only to get to the third square at hopscotch?

Tim: Oh, I suppose you are quite old. For anyone that does know, though: why is she going “square one, square two, square three” when it should of course be “square one, squares two and three”? Still rhymes, still has the melody, removes the idea that you’re utterly incompetent at children’s playground games. If I were Emmelie, I would really, really make that change, because the knowledge of that, combined with how she apparently lives her life like she’s on a hopscotch, just tells us that she’s basically rubbish at life.

Rubbish at music, though, not so much.

Tim: You think?

Tim: Well, it’s just a fairly decent track, enjoyable enough – the verses make some sort of sense about moving forward even if you’re not sure where you’re going (though again a bit flawed – I’m currently watching my way through The Walking Dead, and BLIMEY can a lack of planning get you into a mess). It’ll do. As a new sound, it’ll do. Just, maybe think deeper about the lyrics next time, yeah?

Tim: As I remember, Tom, you’re not such a fan of Emmelie’s style.

Tim: Oh, good. Well give this a go as well, the first from her new album, as I think you might be pleasantly surprised.

Tim: So, she’s ditched a lot of what made Emmelie Emmelie, and is now here with big beat ballads. A shame? Possibly, because there aren’t a lot of people doing what she was, and there are quite a lot of people doing this.

Tim: On the other hand, there aren’t many people doing this as well as Emmelie seemingly does it, so if this sort of calibre song is going to keep coming forth I’ve not got much in the way of complaints. The instrumentation is powerful, and the vocals match that very well, still as strong as ever. The one moan I do have is the ending – I want it to blow out on high like yesterday’s track, not just drop off out of nowhere.

Tim: Hmm. I fear that may be wishful thinking, but regardless: ending aside, love this.

Tim: In an apparent attempt to alienate the entirety of the south-west of Britain, the EBU have chosen to make this the official theme to this year’s Song Contest.

Tim: They certainly didn’t. She’s clearly happy staying true to the sound that won her the competition, or at the that’s the plan that the contest producers have anyway. It makes sense, after all – this is the sound that Europe officially declared their favourite, and it’s here in a song that has a lot of good bits in it.

Tim: For a start, it has “join us” in it quite prominently (though it’s probably in the lyrics as #JoinUs), which is good for the branding and all that. It also has that lovely “make a rain” hook (sod the south-west) which has been going round in my head for quite some time now.

Tim: I can’t deny that the “weya”s get a bit tedious after a while, but that’s made up for by the rest of it. Well done producers, nice choice.

Tim: The follow-up to Only Teardrops – let’s see if she can keep coming up with the goods.

Tim: Well, stylistically it is very similar: the drums and breathiness of the verses evoking images of music from millennia ago, as in fact does the whole hunter/prey metaphor that the song’s carried by.

Tim: That’s then brought way up to date with the guitars and pop melodies in the chorus, and again it works very well and I like it. Certainly show she’s not a one-hit wonder, although I am curious as to how long the ethnic power-ballad thing will be played out for – there are some very different tracks on the album with a great deal of variety, so it’ll be interesting to see if she sticks with what works for the third single, or branches out a bit.

Tim: Erm, ha?

Tim: Oh. HA!

Tim: Yes. Speaking of different tracks on the album, the symphonic version of Only Teardrops is worth a listen – remarkably different, and considerably calmer.

Tim: Well then. Odds on the bookies’ favourite, it defied nobody’s expectations whatsoever when it romped to a fairly decisive victory, giving us a second Eurovision winner in a row who’s in dire need of a comb.

Tim: The staging raises an interesting question, though, which was brought up by, of all people, Ana Matronic on BBC3’s coverage of the semifinal – are they cheating a bit with the spark fountains and stuff?

Tim: There’s no doubt that it’s a good song, and a deserving winner, but spark fountains do, to anyone who’s ever seen Idol, The Voice or The X Factor, convey ‘THIS IS THE WINNER’. It turns a good performance into an incredible one, and was seen to an even greater extent with Romania, originally one of my least favourite songs – in the stadium, the crowd’s reaction for the first couple of minutes was a basic WTF; the sparks and confetti hit, though, and suddenly people, including me, couldn’t get enough of it.

Tim: Hmm. Nice choice with Belgium there, though I’d have to disagree with your choice of the cockney-less Frankie Cocozza there; mind you, my favourites actually ended up being Russia and Iceland so what do I know.

Back to this, though, and obviously “cheating” is a big word, and the only reason other countries didn’t have similar effects is that they didn’t ask for them, but it’s said a lot that the performance is almost as important as the song; is this taking it too far? To be honest, I kind of think it might be.