Category: Europop

Loreen – Euphoria

Tim: The winner. Of Melodifestivalen, and of Eurovision itself. Deserved?

Tom: Yes.

Tim: Oh yes.

Tom: And I think anyone who knew the tracks in advance could have called it. It’s the only one in there which sounds like it deserves to be at the top of every chart in Europe.

Tim: EXACTLY.

Now I’ll be frank: there were others I preferred. Jedward did well for Ireland, I enjoyed Malta with their on-stage DJ and fancy footwork, and Gréta Salóme & Jónsi’s Iceland performance was a highlight for me. But this— this victory is manna from above for us Eurovision fans. Because here we have a winner that’s acceptable worldwide, by the general populace.

Tom: The UK had Love Shine A Light back in the nineties, and – of course – Lena’s Satellite did the same for most of Europe if not the UK. This is the trouble with the British entries: we keep sending somewhat-silly entries, and we keep getting knocked down.

Tim: I don’t know about silly entries – Blue last year took it seriously and did well, and everyone involved genuinely thought The Hump had a good chance this year. But you’re right that people think of it as silly, but maybe that’ll change a bit. Because people can comment on how Eurovision’s ridiculous, or a terrible collection of music, or that the best song never wins, but then we’ll say, “But what about Loreen? That went top 10 all across Europe, got a great deal of radio airplay and was big in clubs all summer long, and that’s a Eurovision graduate.”

Now, I’m perhaps exaggerating a bit, and possibly getting my hopes up too much. But this was at number 1 on iTunes in the UK within eighteen hours of being performed. This is a big tune, and possibly, and hopefully, this generation’s Waterloo.

Tom: I’m not going to go that far: Waterloo’s what I’d call a “wedding disco song”, and perhaps only one or two tracks every year graduate into that kind of utterly mainstream, known-by-everyone success. (Recently: I Gotta Feeling and Party Rock Anthem.) But is it going to be the summer’s European hit? Almost certainly. And it deserves to be.

Saturday Reject: Danny Saucedo – Amazing

It deserves to do very well. Oh, wait. It didn’t. Never mind.

Tim: So, tonight’s the night, but we’ve just got time for one more reject. Let’s make it a bloody brilliant one, and one that it seems a bit unfair to put in a post with ‘Reject’ in the title – it did, in fact, get more phone votes than most previous Melodifestivalen winners did. Still, those are the rules, so here we go.

This year’s Melodifestivalen, a tad below the usual standard, started out as a two-horse race, really, and then, following a brilliant performance of Loreen’s Euphoria in her semi-final and technical issues in Danny’s semi-final performance, became closer to a one-point-five-horse race, ending with her getting 32% of the phone votes, this song getting 22% and the next one getting 8%. And here it is.

Tom: That’s possibly the best Eurovision intro I’ve heard all year. Admittedly that’s because it sounds like they copy-and-pasted it from the end of a Coldplay track, but still, full marks.

Tim: So many things to mention. Take the outfits. ‘Bloody hell, what is that weird thing he’s wearing?’ I thought, until about forty seconds in, when I thought, ‘BLOODY HELL, WHAT IS THAT BRILLIANT THING HE’S WEARING?’ I’m going clothes shopping tomorrow, and I’m not coming back until I’ve found one of those. (White or black, I’m not bothered.)

Tom: Electroluminescent wire, or EL wire for short. It’s brilliant stuff – been around for years, but it wasn’t until last year’s America’s Got Talent that it hit the mainstream.

Tim: Yeah, but when’s it going to hit Topshop, that’s what I want to know.

But then there’s also the breakdown. Normally, as we know, I’m not a dubstep fan, and a breakdown like this would put me right off the song. (If I’m honest, when I listen to the studio version it does put me off a little bit.) With this performance, my God is it fantastic. It’s perfect: people who think Eurovision’s cack will be impressed by the musical variety, and people who love Eurovision will ignore the music and focus on the pretty colours.

Tom: Not to mention he’s singing live while also managing a complicated dance routine. That’s trickier than it looks – and it looks tricky.

Tim: It does, and the dancing’s exceptionally good – take a look at the bit just after 1:40, because if I hadn’t been watching this live I’d swear blind there was a cut there.

There’s the lyrics as well – you don’t get long to get your song’s meaning across in Eurovision, what with it being a three-minute song only being heard once, and lyrics often go unnoticed. I don’t really think that’s a problem here, though, because it’s fairly simple and it’s being yelled at the audience enough it’ll probably be a crowd-pleaser.

Tom: It certainly pleased me.

Tim: As for the rest of it, the woo-oa-oah bits in the chorus remind me of Save The World, which is just as great, and overall there’s such a fantastic vibe to everything – music, dancers, ‘I’m feeling great, I’m feeling awesome…I think you’re amazing’ – that this song surely can’t really fail to please. Can it?

Tom: I hope not. It deserves to do very well. Oh, wait. It didn’t. Never mind.

Tim: More votes than almost all the previous winners. I think it’s done well enough, even if it didn’t win. Speaking of doing well, I’ve written quite a lot about this song, and entirely resisted the temptation to describe this as amazing. I’m proud of myself.

Icona Pop – I Love It

At least it doesn’t outstay its welcome.

Tom: Bit of moderate swearing in this one, just to warn our reader.

Tim: Prude. But actually, before we get going, I’ll be honest. Writing yesterday’s review, I wasn’t at my best, and felt somewhat lacklustre. But then I happened to come across this again, which appeared a couple of weeks ago, and which I never really got at the time.

Tom: I don’t really get it now.

Tim: Well, I sort of do. I won’t say the obvious, because I don’t, but it is pretty damn good. Why? Well, if I were back at school and that question was in a test and demanded an essay, I’d begin with something like: To answer that question, first we must consider why it is I don’t love it.

Tom: What?

Tim: I’d continue in that vein, blathering on, but basically making the point that what with tune being practically non-existent and the lyrics consisting of a four-line verse, repeating three times…

Tom: (A verse that seems a bit too inspired by the horrible Boom Boom Pow, if you ask me.)

Tim: …a second mini-verse repeated twice and a chorus made of a whole six words, the song barely qualifies to be described as such.

Tom: Only about two and a half minutes as well – at least it doesn’t outstay its welcome too much.

Tim: The thing is: that’s exactly what it should be. It’s not about singing, or making music, or caring about anything. It’s about acting as you would in the scenario set out in that very first line: “I got this feeling on the summer day when you were gone.” To whit, sod everything else, let’s have some fun without the crap boyfriend and shout about it. And that’s it, really.

Tom: Which is all fair enough, but well, it’s still not much of a song.

Tim: No. No it isn’t.

Ola – I’m In Love

Stunningly mediocre.

Tim: At the risk of influencing your view, I’m going to come straight out and say that I find this stunningly mediocre. But let’s discuss it anyway.

Tom: That introduction is nicely, and then… then he starts singing.

Tim: It’s not the greatest, is it? But you see, if we split it up, we have the opening bits, being boring, dull and autotuned to the point of musical extinction. We move to the chorus, which starts to improve, and then as the chorus reaches its peak it could be described as pretty good.

Tom: The whuy-uy-uy bits don’t work for me, but I’ll admit that the main bit of the (long) chorus isn’t bad.

Tim: Catchy, perhaps (though it’s worth noting that a lot of truly horrific songs are quite catchy too).

Tom: The verses really start to grate for me after a while. The backing is a bit too monotonous, the melody a bit dirge-like – even the good bit of the chorus can’t push it above average.

Tim: True – overall, it sort of averages out, to, well, average, but while it alters a bit over time, getting gradually better and more lifelike, it never really manages to do anything special.

So now that’s done, let’s move on to the next one.

Saturday Reject: Ulrik Munther – Soldiers

Blimey, when that kicks in, it kicks in hard.

Tim: Unlike Lisa Miskovsky a couple of weeks back, here you can hear Ulrik playing his instruments, and then coming third. With quite a good song.

Tom: Blimey, when that kicks in, it kicks in hard. Put the drummer on a stand, and make him work for his pay.

Tim: Now, I really like this, despite a lot of reasons not to – the melody’s not much more than average, the hate and sleeveless top make him look like a bit of a bell-end and the hands-free harmonica sort of makes me want to slap his ‘look at what I can do’ attitude.

Tom: Agreed on all points.

Tim: But on the other hand, the drumming in the background adds a lot to the song, that harmonica sounds great even if it looks silly, and the vocal’s pretty great as well. So really, the best thing for me to do is listen to this but not watch it. Which, of course, would make this a terrible type of song to send to Eurovision.

Tom: I do wonder how many Eurovisions would have turned out differently if they’d been purely on the radio.

Tim: Well, Lordi can kiss goodbye to their victory for a start. And a hell of a lot of wind-machine manufacturers would go out of business.

AWOLNATION – Jump On My Shoulders

“This is, quite simply, fantastic.”

Tom: Any listeners with sensitive ears: watch out for a quick F-bomb at the end of this one.

Tim: Ooh, they missed an apostrophe in there. That’s not good.

Tom: “Thats not good”, surely? Anyway, reader Isabella writes in with this one and adds: “This is, quite simply, fantastic.” A bold statement.

Tim: Bold indeed, but certainly an acceptable viewpoint. Any further thoughts?

Tom: Well, she’s also sent a well-written summary of the song that more-or-less matches with my thoughts, so I’ll quote it here:

“I can best describe the verses as ‘biting’ but the unbelievably poppy chorus reaches stratospheric heights (just WAIT until the beat of the first one kicks in) and the full-on screaming near the end actually enhances the effect rather than feeling out-of-place.”

Tim: Do you know, that pretty much matches my views as well.

Tom: It’s a cracking chorus. Now, I think that she’s being charitable with ‘biting’, that the Keynotes-esque follow-the-bouncing-ball effect on the lyrics does the band no favours at all—

Tim: Nor does the apostrophe they missed, although I like what they did with the ‘jump on my shoulders’.

Tom: —and the middle eight overstays its welcome a bit… but this is a proper anthemic singalong track, and I can forgive them all that.

Tim: Yeah. And although after a minute and a half or so it felt like it would have to drag on a lot, it really didn’t when it played out. Good stuff.

Calle Runefelt – Walk On Water

I haven’t even got past the first verse, and I completely agree that it’s better.

Tim: Remember that Machine one from Friday that was in the competition? Well actually, don’t vote for that because this is better.

Tim: And just so you know, I wrote that first sentence even before it got to 2:51, and at that moment I was properly sold.

Tom: As I’m writing this, I haven’t even got past the first verse, and I completely agree that it’s better. Now, admittedly, in this case “better” means “more suited to my musical tastes”, but, you know potato-potahto.

Tim: That chorus has a proper tap/clap/click/something to the beat vibe about it, and even in comparison the verses have still got a decent amount of stuff to them. And then when you throw in the key change – admittedly after all the stopping and starting in the middle eight it had to finish with something pretty good, but that there just makes up for it, the memories of the dodgy bit are thrown out of the window and all that’s left is the triumphant soaring bit in the background, all wrapped up nicely.

Tom: “Soaring” is the right word: but I’m all in favour of a middle eight with strange drum fills and patterns – particularly when the payoff is that good.

Tim: So we’re agreed – this is where you should vote. Not that other one. I forbid you.

Saturday Reject: Plumbo – Ola Nordmann

That starts like a reject from a Michael Flatley routine.

Tim: Here’s a question you’ve probably never been asked before: how many rock bands can you name with a flautist?

Tom: Depends. How good’s the flautist’s musical knowledge? Oh. Wait, never mind. Er, none.

Tim: Well, you can change that to one.

Tom: That starts like a reject from a Michael Flatley routine.

Tim: We’ve got another case here Reidun Sæther’s “THIS IS WHERE THE KEY CHANGE IS”, though to a slightly lesser extent, and while this could sort of be described as rock music, it could just as accurately be described as schlager-dressed-as-rock music. Standard progression of verses and choruses, key change, closing bit, it’s all in there. And, like many songs of this type, it works pretty damn well.

Tom: Amazing how one flute can change the tone so much, though.

Tim: It is, isn’t it? If it—the rock genre bit, that is, although it’s the case for the flute as well—became a regular thing, I don’t think it’d be so good, as part of the charm of these songs is the way they play with expectations. If it was expected, it’d be dull, and no more appealing than the usual stuff, and arguably less so. But as it is, it’s good.

Tom: That said, I can’t see it doing better than middle-of-the-table on the actual Eurovision board, so perhaps Norway did the right thing.

Basshunter – Northern Light

I swear he looks more like David Hasselhoff every time he releases a video.

Tim: Basshunter’s fourth album has been on its way ever since the first single from it, the not-very-Basshunter-sounding Saturday, got a lukewarm reception from his fans almost two years ago. This is the second single from it, and it’s a bit more Basshunter-y. He’s even brought back that storyline he had going on in the videos. Because that was what people were missing.

Tom: I swear he looks more like David Hasselhoff every time he releases a video. That’s not a compliment.

Tim: It really isn’t, but it’s also not inaccurate.

Tom: “I will keep my magic sparkle bright?” Also, damn it, it’s Northern Lights. Plural.

Tim: So far, so back to proper Basshunter.

Tom: Somehow I was expecting more. His name’s “Basshunter”, for crying out loud: would it kill him to actually have some BANGING BASS in there instead of the generic dance beat we’ve got here?

Tim: Oh, come on – he hasn’t had BANGING BASS ever since he went mainstream four years back, has he? No, this is the stuff most people are used to, or at least it is until whatever this ‘let’s take a break and do something different’ is? I mean come on, no one wants it, it sticks out horribly, and it interrupts what is otherwise bog-standard excellent Basshunter fare. Yes, the song was coming to the point where it needed to go somewhere else, but you could at least cut it into halves and spread it out a bit, so it might sound a tad more integrated and flowing, no?

Tom: I think it’s just a long middle-eight – more like a middle-sixteen – but it doesn’t sound like him. Mind you, he’s been going for nearly a decade now.

Tim: More, actually, although I must confess I’d never heard of that album until now.

Interlude aside, though, this song is a great and much-awaited return to form, I think.

Tom: I think he’s still got a way to go.

Saturday Reject: Lisa Miskovsky – Why Start A Fire

Can you hear even one guitar note in any part of the song?

Tim: Two questions, Tom: what do you think of this, and can you hear even one guitar note in any part of the song?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USUUwucrTzA

Tom: It’s okay but nothing special; and no. No I can’t. Which is interesting, because she’s clearly strumming it. Although I’m not sure she if ever changes the chord she’s holding.

Tim: Weird, isn’t it? But I ask what you think of it because Sweden was split on it – it went straight through to the final in its heat, but then came last in the phone vote on the night.

Tom: Interesting: a song that doesn’t grow on the audience over time.

Tim: My guess as to why? It’s almost novelty – not a weird or unusual track in itself, but it’s still got an ‘Ooh, what’s all this about?’ factor to it that got people voting the first time, but got people rejecting it the second time, either thinking ‘Yeah, we’ve seen this, bring on the next one’ or ‘Oh, come on, get to the exciting bit. What do you mean, there isn’t one? This is the final, it can’t just finish witho—oh. Apparently it can.’

Tom: Yep. It really can. It’s pleasant, but that’s all.

Tim: Actually, that may have sounded a bit harsh. It’s not dull or boring; it’s exciting enough for lots of things. It’s just not exciting enough for a Melodifestivalen final.And let’s just ignore that guitar. Because that seems to be what all but one of everybody involved in the song did.