There's a horrible concept in music called guilty pleasures, where snooty people get themselves off the hook for liking something of a low perceived cultural value, thereby saving themselves from being looked down upon by their even snootier mates. It's an idea that's always heavily troubled me.
However…
This one is nudging pretty near the top of my list of songs that I shouldn't really like, but just can't help myself from loving. And if that makes it a guilty pleasure, then so be it!
It's not as if it hasn't got all the ingredients of being an absolute shocker. Its promising trancy intro swiftly shifts back a gear into some kind of mongrel futuro disco, while its lyric makes absolutely no sense at all, littered as it is with screamingly pointless non sequiturs. And then there's the lad himself, all preening and pompous and overtly sexual.
And yet, it's terrific fun, and possibly the most honest and natural sounding of all the up tempo dance tunes of the year. And you just know that he's going to be one heck of a handful in Kiev. I'm sure I'll soon get tired of it, but for now it's exactly the kind of injection of pure fun and nonsense that this contest needed, whatever the critics may think of it.
Came for the song, stayed for the bizarrely contentious opinions on the Youtube video. Some people are apparently put off by the imagery in the video (which I think is super fun and goofy!) and by the lyrics, which they perceive as homoerotic (which doesn't make sense to me, they're sex-neutral)
ReplyDeleteAnd frig, this is the Eurovision song from this year I've listened to the most times and it's only been out for a year.
Bet that ponytail took a lot of barber shop sweepings to make up...
ReplyDeleteI'm trying to work out if this is Slavko's honest artistry or if this is a parody, a bit like the "Slavic Girls" video...