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If you were to line up all the 47-year-olds in the world by order of how important music is to them, so you might have people who make a living for it and search it out constantly at one end, and perhaps who are genuinely completely neutral about it at the other, I suspect I would be much closer to the neutral end than the essential end. At a guess, I reckon I might be something like 20% or 25% of the way along the line. My neutrality is not profoundly pronounced; I know what I like, and like many people, it's music that reminds me of feeling young, noting that I got most of my music influence from the (mostly video) games I was playing or the TV I was watching, rather than being from listening to music played for music's sake on the radio. This doesn't mean that it has to come from the '80s or early '90s, but that's the mood I often look for.
If you were to line up all the 47-year-olds in the Eurovision Song Contest broadcasting area by order of how important music is to them, I reckon I'd be rather further from the neutral end of the line - maybe 60% of the way along, noting that the people at the non-neutral end of the line are really, really into it. Eurovision is still a minority interest - the 2020 Grand Final was estimated as getting a 23% share of TV viewers - but just about everything's a minority interest, and Eurovision is a much bigger one than most. My fandom is to the degree of "I'll probably tune in for the Grand Final if I remember".
Putting the above together, along with everything else you might know about me, it'll probably come as no surprise that I'm into Eurovision for the numbers rather than for the music, and Eurovision has always been deeply numeric as a result of its scoring system, with the (mostly moderately slight) variations in the scoring from one year to the next keeping things interesting on a macro- scale as well as a micro- one. It's fairly rare for any of the songs in the show to stick with me, and often it's songs associated with Eurovision rather than directly from it that stick. I have decidedly mixed but mostly positive feelings about Netflix's Fire Saga, but the Song-Along is joyful and I have watched it dozens of times, and one of the things I'm hoping for from a return to ( spoiler for last night's winner, just in case you don't know. )
So it's fairly rare for any of the Eurovision songs to grab me. I don't mind at all when a song tries to be jokey, and Wadde Hadde Dudde Da? still pops up as a punchline in my life somewhere once or twice a year. Among the other non-obvious hits, in the very early days of my LiveJournal I was smitten with Hello From Mars from 2003. There may have been others, but they don't immediately jump out at me.
So imagine my surprise when something hit home for me last night, and something fairly unlikely based on everything I've said above, to the point where I've listened to it at least six or eight times since the event. I was listening more than watching, and the staging of the live performance is not particularly special, so I'll instead link to the official video, with a shiny alert that I would recommend against it for the particularly photosensitive: Promise by Voyager, representing Australia, or at least the broadcaster SBS who selected them. I love it; I'm not entirely sure why, but here are the reasons that I've been able to discern, or at least guess at. (Timestamps refer to segments within the video above.)
1. 0:06 - moderate, but attention-grabbing, opening beat.
2. 0:57 - "promise me it's gonna be alright" is a very human, relatable sentiment.
3. 1:03 - the last -oh-oh is killer, though I suspect it's textbook from music theory.
4. 1:23 - "have you ever been alone too much?" - yes, yes, I have, especially over the last four months minus one day.
5. 1:24 - "have you ever prayed for human touch?" - ditto, and the lift on the "touch" is delightful.
6. 1:29 - "have you ever just lost a little part of you to find a little something new?" - absolutely resonant for me at the moment.
7. 1:54 - the drama of a half-second of silence followed by a big drop back in is not a particularly uncommon trick but it's a popular one because it has impact.
8. 2:37 - such a lovely contrast on the electric guitar as the song works up to its big finale.
9. 2:43 - it's a mid-tempo song but the fast keytar segment takes this from very good to great for me by reminding me of '90s demo music as much as anything else.
10. 2.52 - lovely closing chord progression to tie everything up (though probably used for hundreds of years).
11. 2:57 - powerful and surprisingly long-held closing note with a triumphant and jubliant conclusion.
On top of that: they look great, their look really suits the music, especially the variety in hair at both ends of heads, the lead singer sounds less aggressive than he looks, they perform dramatically and energetically in a fashion that suggests they're having a great time, the outdoor segments of the video are somewhere beautiful, the indoor segments are a certain sort of nostalgic high-tech, the whole thing really nails the ending, they're not all-male, the female guitarist adds greatly the effect and just notably shifts her spectacles at 2:20.
What's not to love? Or, at least: if you're me, right here, right now, what's not to love?
If you were to line up all the 47-year-olds in the Eurovision Song Contest broadcasting area by order of how important music is to them, I reckon I'd be rather further from the neutral end of the line - maybe 60% of the way along, noting that the people at the non-neutral end of the line are really, really into it. Eurovision is still a minority interest - the 2020 Grand Final was estimated as getting a 23% share of TV viewers - but just about everything's a minority interest, and Eurovision is a much bigger one than most. My fandom is to the degree of "I'll probably tune in for the Grand Final if I remember".
Putting the above together, along with everything else you might know about me, it'll probably come as no surprise that I'm into Eurovision for the numbers rather than for the music, and Eurovision has always been deeply numeric as a result of its scoring system, with the (mostly moderately slight) variations in the scoring from one year to the next keeping things interesting on a macro- scale as well as a micro- one. It's fairly rare for any of the songs in the show to stick with me, and often it's songs associated with Eurovision rather than directly from it that stick. I have decidedly mixed but mostly positive feelings about Netflix's Fire Saga, but the Song-Along is joyful and I have watched it dozens of times, and one of the things I'm hoping for from a return to ( spoiler for last night's winner, just in case you don't know. )
So it's fairly rare for any of the Eurovision songs to grab me. I don't mind at all when a song tries to be jokey, and Wadde Hadde Dudde Da? still pops up as a punchline in my life somewhere once or twice a year. Among the other non-obvious hits, in the very early days of my LiveJournal I was smitten with Hello From Mars from 2003. There may have been others, but they don't immediately jump out at me.
So imagine my surprise when something hit home for me last night, and something fairly unlikely based on everything I've said above, to the point where I've listened to it at least six or eight times since the event. I was listening more than watching, and the staging of the live performance is not particularly special, so I'll instead link to the official video, with a shiny alert that I would recommend against it for the particularly photosensitive: Promise by Voyager, representing Australia, or at least the broadcaster SBS who selected them. I love it; I'm not entirely sure why, but here are the reasons that I've been able to discern, or at least guess at. (Timestamps refer to segments within the video above.)
1. 0:06 - moderate, but attention-grabbing, opening beat.
2. 0:57 - "promise me it's gonna be alright" is a very human, relatable sentiment.
3. 1:03 - the last -oh-oh is killer, though I suspect it's textbook from music theory.
4. 1:23 - "have you ever been alone too much?" - yes, yes, I have, especially over the last four months minus one day.
5. 1:24 - "have you ever prayed for human touch?" - ditto, and the lift on the "touch" is delightful.
6. 1:29 - "have you ever just lost a little part of you to find a little something new?" - absolutely resonant for me at the moment.
7. 1:54 - the drama of a half-second of silence followed by a big drop back in is not a particularly uncommon trick but it's a popular one because it has impact.
8. 2:37 - such a lovely contrast on the electric guitar as the song works up to its big finale.
9. 2:43 - it's a mid-tempo song but the fast keytar segment takes this from very good to great for me by reminding me of '90s demo music as much as anything else.
10. 2.52 - lovely closing chord progression to tie everything up (though probably used for hundreds of years).
11. 2:57 - powerful and surprisingly long-held closing note with a triumphant and jubliant conclusion.
On top of that: they look great, their look really suits the music, especially the variety in hair at both ends of heads, the lead singer sounds less aggressive than he looks, they perform dramatically and energetically in a fashion that suggests they're having a great time, the outdoor segments of the video are somewhere beautiful, the indoor segments are a certain sort of nostalgic high-tech, the whole thing really nails the ending, they're not all-male, the female guitarist adds greatly the effect and just notably shifts her spectacles at 2:20.
What's not to love? Or, at least: if you're me, right here, right now, what's not to love?
