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.