Scrunchy Face Sounds

Ben 01:14

Like Australia decided to have like a very strong alumni class and I'm so happy that as they've been doing internal selections they're going, oh we should we should tap them, we should ask them. That would be fun.

Mike 01:26

I was at work when the video came through, Eurovision was being very secretive about who the artist is gonna be, and it was gonna be revealed when the video is revealed. I had checked Blue Sky first, and saw some people just going, And then, like, my immediate reaction was just like, oh, of course. As you were saying, like, Australia is doing something that I think a number of countries should really consider doing. Have a couple national selection shows, build up a talent pool, draw from that pool for the next couple of years. This is a fantastic choice. It was like, ah, it's so obvious in retrospect.

Ben 01:58

A few days before this drop, they played a very small snippet. Uh, of, it was basically just like some of like the, the little twinkling synths in this. It was so small that like, I don't, it could have been anybody, but like it, in hindsight, I'm like, oh, of course it's them. Apparently when they said happy 2000 and whatever, they meant, uh, 2024.

Mike 02:16

I think it set the tone for the week in a way where it's just like, the term world music gets thrown around quite a bit. And, it really does feel like this sort of generic Barnes Noble type category where it's like, oh, anything that's not, like, What Sweden's selling. Uh, we will get to that in a moment. but it does seem like this is kind of setting the tone for the remaining releases for almost the rest of the field.

Ben 02:40

I've been listening to this one a bunch. Part of me, would love something A little bit more in the vein of Happy 2000 and whatever, or Lie to Me, the track that they did with Kano. I trust that we're gonna get a really good performance out of this.

Mike 02:54

I agree. Yeah, like I really like the performance that they did when they were in Australia Decides. I think it is kind of their style where it is just kind of like hook on top of hook on top of hook. Just don't pay attention to the lyrical content because you're just going to find things that are kind of annoying.

Ben 03:08

Mm hmm.

Mike 03:09

like back in, 2000 whatever, like the whole millennial, uh, Monroe, that kind of line. She's like, and here it's like the, the Fleetwood Macs and the Janets. And she's like, yeah,

Ben 03:20

I had completely forgotten about the Millennial Monroe and like, it just immediately made a face.

Mike 03:26

like, Oh, like the rest of this is good. Just like, just don't listen too closely. Otherwise. Yeah. You're just like,

Ben 03:33

Yeah, just, the places where I'm not making that face, it does skirt uncomfortably close to me to like, Jessica Mauboy's We Got Love of a little bit too Hug the World, Generic,

Mike 03:46

that, that is fair.

Ben 03:48

that one was okay.

Mike 03:50

Yeah. Yeah, we can go into that one

Ben 03:53

We're making that noise a

Mike 03:54

Yeah, I know. Yes, but first impression, I'm very happy with this choice. And I'm looking forward to kind of sitting with it for a couple of weeks and seeing how it bounces out. I'm really looking forward to seeing a live performance of this one. I'm not worried about it, I'm just like, oh, what tricks are they going to have up their sleeve? Greece rolls the dice with Marina Satti's "Zari"

Ben 04:13

A few days after Australia, we got Greece's entry from Marina Sati, which was Zari. I love what's going on in the video. There is something so thought through about how she wants to present herself, and this song, and Greece. Song wise, I'm like, okay, but like, without the context of these visuals, how do I feel about the song? And I'm still sitting with that.

Mike 04:48

Yeah, I've just been on such an emotional journey with this song since it was released because, like, the first time I listened to it, it was, like, kind of hitting me in, the reggaeton place, and, reggaeton just bounces off of me. Like, I just have a very difficult time engaging with it and really kind of finding nuance with it. The more that I'm listening to this, it's like, oh, okay, there's a lot going on here. The music video, it's so savagely hilarious, like, to the point where it's just like, wait, are we the guy in the car? Because, um, I'm feeling hurt if that's the case, but

Ben 05:24

there's, there's such a savage critique of Tourist culture, and I'm just thinking, like, I've been reading a book by Kyle Chayka, Filterworld, about algorithmic recommendations, and sort of the flattening of culture that's come from that. And part of it is about going to places because you saw a friend post about them on Instagram and you want to take that photo of that waterfall

Mike 05:44

Yep, yep, and uh, yeah, and I think that is hitting exactly what this song, or at least what the video for this song, is trying to express. I think that is brilliant. As a song that will need to be performed on a stage live, I am deeply, deeply curious how this is going to work. It feels so esoteric in a lot of ways, and it will need to grab people immediately, or there's just no chance to grab them, like, over the course of the song.

I think Grease has a very interesting challenge ahead of themselves, and I really hope that they are able to deliver on it. If they are able to kind of tell the same visual story that the video is able to tell in their stage performance, that's gonna be awesome.

Ben 06:35

Yeah.

Mike 06:36

excited about that.

Ben 06:37

The entry that it's reminding me of, in terms of kind of conceptual presentation that really has a chance to not translate in three minutes on the stage. Telemoveis from Portugal a few years

Mike 06:50

Oh, yeah? Yeah, the one that jumped to my mind was Future Lover. from last year, uh, where it is just that kind of same, like, very deep critique happening, but then how do you get that to happen on stage? But yeah, I, I like the comparison as well.

Ben 07:08

Instrumentally, I like what's going on. It doesn't feel like it has the standard verse chorus structure we expect from a pop song at Eurovision. Like, there's a lot of space for dance and there's various different little fragments that all kind of fit together into an interesting mosaic. But like, Is this going to translate? Again, I don't know how they're going to stage this, but I'm really curious.

Mike 07:29

And, I mean, given what the overall stage concept is with all of those moving pieces. They've got a lot to play with here. This one's been growing on me in, like, the three or four days since it's released, so I'm very excited to see, how enthusiastic I am by the time May rolls around.

Ben 07:46

Good job, Grace!

Mike 07:47

Hopefully you can, uh, I was gonna try to do some sort of sports metaphor here, it's like, I have no idea how that would work. It's just like, carry the ball over the line, you can do this. Marcus and Martinus win Melodifestivalen with "Unforgettable"

Ben 07:58

Saturday, instead of like, 17 different finals to watch, it was just the two. And one of those two was Sweden. I have watched one of the Swedens live. Hooray. It was good, I did like the very We Are The World staging of Tattoo at the beginning.

Mike 08:15

Yes, uh, yeah, have you seen, the Greatest Night in Pop documentary?

Ben 08:19

I have not. But I'm culturally aware that it's about that.

Mike 08:23

Yes, and like that was what immediately jumped to mind. It's like, you know, I would actually be kind of interested to see a Melfest take on a similar style documentary, but, uh, yeah, highly recommend. A couple friends of the show, worked on it. So, check it out. It's just a good story. A lot of 80s fashion, a lot. Oh my god, Pinstripe LeMay came up in my notes, so

Ben 08:45

Okay, I'm in.

Mike 08:47

Yeah, so But we're not talking about that movie, we are talking about Melfest.

Ben 08:51

Yeah, and it kind of went how I expected it to in that we had the performances. we did have a very delightful interval act the Bjorn Zone, the infinitely multiplying boy band.

Mike 09:01

They presented it as, like, Song 13 in the lineup, and I'm just like, I'm kind of voting for Song 13, if I'm being honest.

Ben 09:07

I was, I was, I was on board with song 13, I don't know how they're gonna stage this for Malmo. There's, there's so many of them and only six can be on stage.

Mike 09:13

Holograms, nothing but holograms.

Ben 09:15

Is there anything in the rules about the vocalists taking turns on stage? As long as there are only six of them at any one time, we're safe.

Mike 09:21

Yeah, or like the Dust in the Turkey rule of, they're all on carts, so as long as none of their

Ben 09:26

Yeah, just only six of their, yeah, six of them are touching the stage. I'm just picturing like a human pyramid where like six of them are the

Mike 09:33

Yeah.

Ben 09:35

We will not be getting Bjornson, we will be getting Marcus and Martinus.

Mike 09:39

Big swing to name your song Unforgettable.

Ben 09:56

Yep, yeah, just huge, huge chutzpah to go unforgettable when it's this.

Mike 10:02

don't think Sweden was really spoiled for choice this year, compared to the other songs that we're talking about in this episode and the whole world music vibe, this is the opposite of that. This is just such microplastic, it's,

Ben 10:16

yes, oh, microplastic is great. I do like the use of the word venomous. It makes me think that the woman in question is a scorpion.

Mike 10:23

The thing for me about this is it really feels like it has been sitting on the shelf since Lipstick. in 2011, where it's just like, okay, we need twins. maybe it's just like the fact that Usher at the Super Bowl was pretty recent and does kind of sound like something that would be on the radio around the time, like that, like 2010 era when Usher and Neo were. Dominating the radio. Then it got me thinking of how this sounds a little bit like The Weeknd and, his performance at the Super Bowl where he's wandering through the Hall of Mirrors. Yeah, it's like, oh, their staging is kind of reminiscent of that. So, yeah, this is the Super Bowl halftime show performance entry.

Ben 11:05

Again, I find it wild that we're doing a we brought our own staging from home when you're the home team.

Mike 11:10

I

Ben 11:11

And also as somebody who has now been in the audience, I'm just like, that's gonna be annoying for the people who are on the sides of their big light walls.

Mike 11:17

mean, I guess it depends on how it's set up. I'm trying to remember how, I guess it wasn't the same sort of problem with, Benjamin Ingrosso's stage, back in 2018.

Ben 11:28

just like one big light wall behind him and just a bunch of tight camera

Mike 11:32

Yeah, it wasn't the Pinini press on the side, or, I guess, Trash Compactor? It, it, like, the, the decoration of the wall thing is reminding me of the Trash Compactor scene from Star Wars, so,

Ben 11:42

yes, very much so. It's like that mixed with the room from Jim Iroquois Virtual Insanity.

Mike 11:49

yeah, yeah. Now I do kind of want to see Marcus and Martinus, in Jamiroquai hats.

Ben 11:53

When we're bringing back Y2K fashion, we can't just bring back the good

Mike 11:57

Yes.

Ben 11:58

We need to bring back the terrible things, too.

Mike 12:00

Oh, flare jeans for everybody. There we go. Pull out my high school wardrobe. You're speaking my language. All right.

Ben 12:08

It's sort of the same sort of solid Swedish entry that they've sent for the last five years.

Mike 12:12

If they had to go through the semifinals, I think this would still be safe, but that's the problem. it is safe.

Ben 12:18

It's safe, it's not really doing anything that they haven't done. I don't know, I feel like we have done a lot of yelling about Melfest and just, it needs to, it's getting stale. I don't think it's necessarily a decrease in quality, I think this is the level of quality that Melfest has been at, but just like, everybody else is stepping up their game.

Mike 12:35

Oh, yeah, so many of the other countries have caught up to what Melfest has been doing, and, like, it has been that way for a while. when five of the songs are written by, Jimmy Choker, and the other five are written by Thomas Jeason and the Debs it's just like, there's Ugh, we can get into this deeper in the off season, because I know that we have gut rehab level thoughts of what Sweden needs to do.

Ben 12:56

I'm making such a spreadsheet about

Mike 12:57

Awesome. I don't have much else to say about Sweden. Oh, uh, except that autocorrect did help out, uh, when I was putting, information about this track in the docs. it accidentally change, Martinus to Martinis. So, if you need an idea for your Eurovision menu, uh, now you have a free one. So

Ben 13:13

There we go. Oh, also, they're Norwegian!

Mike 13:16

Oh, yeah. I believe they won Was it Junior? Oh,

Ben 13:21

Grand Prix

Mike 13:21

that was it.

Ben 13:22

And The Masked Singer 2022.

Mike 13:25

At least they're finally getting to go. It looks like they really want this.

Ben 13:27

Yeah, exactly.

Mike 13:28

I'm glad that their dreams are coming true. I just wish it was a bit later.

Ben 13:32

Yes. Marker

Mike 13:35

Speaking of dreams coming true, the end of Selection Season 2024 and Portugal's Festival da Cancao. I love that this is the capper to every season, and it usually starts with a group number. They had a very delightful couple of group numbers over the course of the show. The hosting team is fantastic as usual, Filomena, I'm so glad that she's been introduced to our lives because she just has this sparkle in her eye that is like, oh, you are in good hands when she is hosting the show.

Ben 14:03

Can we just get like a 30 minute television program where on a weekly basis she encounters new Swedish

Mike 14:08

Yeah.

Ben 14:10

Because that would be appointment television for

Mike 14:12

Yeah, like, just the way that she was saying Melba. Such a treat. The final had 12 acts performing, there were seven juries across all of Portugal, and had their scores come in, converted to 12, 10, 8. I know we've been griping about that this season, but this is how Festival da Cancao has been working, so it's fine. And then, televote results, and the winner was Yolanda with Grito. The

Ben 14:57

I like, I like how things generally have shaken out for them in the last few years, even if everything in their lineup is not to my taste. This is nice, and again, like, I like the vibe, I like how this fits in and provides I keep calling it structural stability, I'm just like, oh, this is, this is a thing that we've needed in the lineup this year, now that we have like, a number of weird little dudes that are threatening to just sort of make the stage collapse.

Mike 15:22

fact that she's opening the song acapella and it's just such a strong vocal, like it's just like this is a solid vocal performance. Sometimes you just need that, like you don't need it to necessarily be like the poppiest pop song. It's like, nope, this is, Vocal talent and song talent and yeah I think they are delivering on everything that you would expect from a Portuguese entry and I'm, I'm glad that this was the winner.

Although I thought that they had a couple of good choices in the lineup and a couple of songs that I was like oh I really like this it shouldn't go to Eurovision but I really like this and will probably be in my play list

Ben 15:56

What ended up winning the televote, like, you mentioned as we were sort of watching along that it was just sort of like, Portuguese Muse, and like, I was very into it.

Mike 16:04

Yeah, Joao Borges with Pelas Costuras. And it was funny because they interviewed him in the green room shortly after his performance. They asked him what his musical influences were. Did not mention Muse once. I was like, Huh?

Ben 16:17

Shoot him an email, hello, are you familiar? We feel like you might enjoy this.

Mike 16:20

I thought we were going to get through the show without the obligatory ABBA medley. That was not to be, but I think this might have been my favorite ABBA medley of the season.

Ben 16:29

I actively enjoyed it, like, I was just like, this is great,

Mike 16:32

They had Black Mamba from a couple of years ago, Annabella, who represented Portugal in 93, Mimi Cat, who was their representative last year, and Toe Cruz, who represented Portugal in 1995. I think it was the live instrumentation that was really selling this, and I think they were picking some of the ABBA songs that were not in some of the other medleys this year, to the point where I thought they might not do Waterloo.

They ended up closing out with Waterloo, but I like their version of Waterloo, too. Like, they kind of gave it a gospel flair.

Ben 17:06

yeah, like, there was just more interpretation happening overall across all of the songs in a way that I really appreciate, cause like, if you're gonna do an album medley, put some of your own sound in the mix,

Mike 17:17

Yep, yep. And you can kind of get the sense that I think maybe each act picked their favorite ABBA song to throw into the medley and get it to all flow together. It wasn't just like, these are the five songs that you have to use, out amongst yourselves. It's like, oh, no, I really like Voulez Vous, or Gimme Gimme Gimme, like that, this is the one that I want to do. It's like, oh, yeah, this worked out beautifully. A good way to end this very weird selection season.

Coming up 17:41

Israel, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Review Season

Mike 17:41

We have almost all of the songs for Eurovision this year, and the ones that we don't have yet, we at least have information about them. we're recording early on Sunday, and scheduling is making it impossible to, Catch up with the songs as they drop, hopefully by Monday. Hopefully by the time you hear this, we will have all of the songs that are in contention. Israel is dropping their song Hurricane on Sunday afternoon U. S. time. That has gone through some rewrite process. There's been a lot of back and forth over the last couple of weeks, but Eurovision has approved Israel's entry and It will be live by the time this episode has dropped.

Ben 18:23

Buzulade, Georgia's Entrant, is going to be revealing Firefighter on March 11th,

Mike 18:29

Azerbaijan announced that Fahri will be their representative in Malmo. He was on of six singers that were still in contention for their selection. There had been another list or some sort of news report that had that narrowed down to two acts. He was not one of them. So, um, interesting. No word yet on when his track is actually going to drop. I don't even think we have a song title yet.

Ben 18:56

No, well, and I think it's a similar situation with Armenia. We now know that it is La Daniva, who are a world pop duo based in France. Uh, they're very popular amongst the Armenian diaspora, which that's, that's cool that feels like a big thing that they're being tapped.

Mike 19:10

Again, don't know when they're going to drop. I have a feeling it's going to be another case where it's just like, okay, well Azerbaijan released their artist first, and then Armenia released their artist, and it's just going to be like, okay, who's going to blink first? So.

Ben 19:21

Yeah, just kidding. Can the two of you get done playing chicken in the pool? Party's over. When the little press release that came along with Lada Niva, uh, did mention like, You're gonna hear from us soon in the next few days. So, so, you know, sometime this week. Mm hmm.

Mike 19:36

Monday is the submission deadline, but as is usually the case, there are some songs that will get revealed after their deadline. All of their stuff, I assume, is with the EBU. They just have, like, some control over, like, when the public gets to access the stuff, but, you know, public wants it now, so

Ben 19:53

Mm hmm.

Mike 19:55

Once these songs drop, we will be at our full complement of 37 songs.

Ben 20:00

Coming up, is gonna be our review series. We're gonna be doing a deeper dive on five to six entries each week with a special guest. The next three weeks will feature the first semi final. We're switching up this year, we're going to do things more or less in the chronological order of when each song was selected. We're also going to be doing this format for the second semi, but Patreon supporters will also get a Megamix episode to hear our reviews for each semi final in its correct running order once we have that.

Mike 20:24

In the meantime, for our Patreon listeners, we are going to be releasing our The Ones That Got Away episode, in the next week or so. So, these'll be the songs that didn't make it out of their national selections, but that we still have space in our heart for. So, uh, it's always a fun, trip down memory lane of the last three or so months. I guess it's been a little longer. This was a selection season that got kicked off, like, way back in 2023, if you want to feel old.

Ben 20:51

It's, we're at like the weird time where I'm like, I'm like, it's already over, but like, it's also feels like it's finally over.

Mike 20:57

Yep. Speaking of finally over, that's going to do it for this episode of the Eurowhat. Thanks for listening. The Eurowhat podcast is hosted by Mike McComb, that's me, and Ben Smith.

Ben 21:10

That's me. If you'd like to help support the show and get access to past and future bonus episodes, head over to patreon. com slash Eurowhat.

Mike 21:17

Our full coverage of the 2024 Eurovision Song Contest can be found on our website at Eurowhat. com. You can also follow us on social media at Eurowhat.

Ben 21:27

Next time on the Eurowhat, we kick off our semi final review series talking about Slovenia, Ireland, Luxembourg, Ukraine, and Finland. Party's over