Eurovision 2012 Entrants: Serbia

Back to the Balkan ballads.  It seems like every former Yugoslav republic has decided to enter a ballad instead of an uptempo number. 

Serbia's no exception.  And like Macedonia, they decided to go with a singer that has some Eurovision experience.  In this case the singer is Željko Joksimović, he represented Serbia and Montenegro in 2004 with the following song:

Željko Joksimović and The Ad Hoc Orchestra "Lane Moje"

He did a really good job too.  Coming in second to the Ukrainian dervish Ruslana, and followed it up with a third place result by writing the song "Leija" for Bosnian Representatives Hari Mata Hari (which seems to be a redux of his song with The Ad Hoc Orchestra).  Then he became one of the hosts of the 2008 Eurovision Song Contest in Belgrade, while the Serbian entrant performed another one of his songs, which came in sixth in that year's contest.

In other words, the guy has a history with the contest. 

And if you listen and watch the songs--you can make some assumptions about the song he'll perform.  It will be in Serbian, it will be heavily folk tinged, and everybody on stage will be wearing white.

So let's take a listen.

Željko Joksimović  "Nije ljubav stvar"

Well, he's wearing a white jacket, and the flute player from his last appearance as a performer is back and in the same place on stage.  The folk elements are there as well.  And he's singing in Serbian.  Pretty much called it.  And it's good--top ten placing in the final at least--and is probably the best of the Balkan ballads in this contest.

But Joksimović has attempted to prove his versatility as a singer,  the song has also been presented in English.

  

Željko Joksimović  "Synonym"

And I have to say the English version is pretty terrible. 

What may work in Serbian just doesn't work well in English.

Let's take some lines I've transcribed from Joksimović's English language performance:

• Sunshine every single day/Sunny day for sunny sorrow
• But you know the lifeless dream/That love and pain are only synonym 
• I must swim God knows why/It is my turn to cry/To live to die

The first two make no grammatical sense because he's not capable of pluralizing words that need to be plural.  It's "days" and "synonyms", not "day" and "synonym".  And the three lines, from different sections of the song make no sense--it's like the lyricist just chose a stack of breakup song cliches and strung them together.  The literal translation of the song makes more sense that the lyrics he performed.

It's painful for a native English speaker to hear and turns this interesting song unintentionally hilarious. 

So I hope he sticks with the Serbian.