Saturday Reject: Amanda Fondell – Dumb

It’s not hard to see why it came seventh.

Tim: This is good. Very good. But it’s not hard to see why it came seventh in its Melodifestivalen heat.

Tim: I spent at least the first ninety seconds, maybe even two minutes, of this trying to work out what was going on. Not that it’s particularly weird – it’s just so dark that it really just doesn’t seem right. The cracked mirrors, the spikes on her fingers, the expression on her face that’s a mix of deranged and psychopathic. The minor key, the underlying strings that come from a horror film soundtrack.

Tom: You know, I think I could really like this track if it wasn’t for that “dun-dun-dun-dun” in the chorus. That sticks out like a rusty upturned nail on a park bench. And perhaps that middle-eight, where she sounds a bit like a low-rent Bjork. The rest of the track’s cracking, though.

Tim: It’s not particularly surprising – this is, after all, the same singer who provided us with Bastard, wonderfully insulting but not remotely happy – but it sticks out emotionally so much that once you’ve zoned out to it and are able to appreciate it it’s pretty much finished. Technically that means it’s a good thing that it got knocked out, as it would probably bomb in Malmö, but it’s really a shame because it is a fantastic track that was just misplaced.

Agreed: that bell-filled final chorus is amazing, but it’d never take Eurovision.