Eurovision 2013: Finland

Well, back again to Scandinavia for my next Eurovision final analysis--if you actually believe that Finland is considered part of Scandinavia...

The final of Uuden Musiikin Kilpailu (another fun national final to type) took place on February 9th, with eight songs competing to go to Malmö.

It really was a night of poorly named bands, with groups named Last Panda, Lucy Was Driving, and Great Wide North, but none of them were successful., because they were all beaten by

 

The Winner

 

 

 

 

Krista Siegfrids  "Marry Me"

 

I really, really, really despise this song.   The music is fun, poppy and very reminiscent of a Katy Perry number.  But the lyrics.  Oh, the lyrics.  Here's the chorus:

 

So marry me, I'll be your queen bee/

I love you endlessly/

I do it for you, for you, for you/

Yeah, I do it for you, marry me, baby

 

I'll play your game, I'll change my last name/

I'll walk the walk of shame/

I do it for you, for you, for you/

Yeah, I do it for you, marry me, baby

 

And we have to blame these terrible lyrics to Swedish-based American songwriter Sharon Vaughn.  Vaughn had some minor hits in the 1970s on the American country charts, but had her biggest success back in 1980 as the songwriter of the Willie Nelson hit  "My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys".

 

She's a fairly prolific writer, but this song just offends me. 

Update: Sadly, I misread the lyricist of the song. It's not Sarah Vaughn, who actually wrote the lyrics to the song performed by Diandra. My mistake for misreading the line where the lyricists were noted.

The lyrics to marry me were actually written by committee--by Krista Siegfrieds, Erik Nyholm, Kristofer Karlsson and Jessika Lundström.  It also makes me think that my analysis below is less likely to be true, which is even more depressing.

This song is very much in the style of Katy Perry, who does empowering pop songs, and the juxtaposition of the girl power anthem with the frankly misogynist lyrics is disconcerting.  

 

But I'm a guy, so I needed to get a woman's opinion on the song.  So I walked into the next office and played the song for  my coworker Samantha S., who has just gone through her own wedding, so in my mind she would be the perfect person to give another opinion on the lyrics.  

 

I'm glad I did, because she didn't see the song as being misogynist, but a sly commentary on "all the things that women do, but we know what we shouldn't do", especially when it comes to men.  It's a read that I can get behind, and makes me feel a little less infuriated by the lyrics.

 

The problem, though, is that this read requires a command of the English language and a willingness to parse the lyrics.  But the average listener to the song in Europe, who may not have that strong command of English, won't be able to get that subtlety and that is a problem for me.

 

That said:

 

Should Have Won

 

 



 

 Krista Siegfrids "Marry Me"

 

 

Even though I consider the song to be rather horrid, it was the only song that I could potentially go anywhere in Malmö.   The rest of the songs were more along these lines:

 

 

Arion   "Lost"

 

Compared to Siegfrids' performance, which was fun and polished, most every other performance looked like amateur hour at a local bar. 

 

However, one of the other performances did stand out:

 

 

 Mikael Saari  "We Should Be Through"

 

I have to admit I appreciated this song more for the sheer audacity of the performance than the song itself.   "We Should Be Through" put the focus on the music more than any Eurovision song I can remember since this entry:

 

 

 

Secret Garden   "Nocturne"  1995   Norway

 

 

I don't think Saari would have been as successful as Secret Garden (which won the whole shebang back in 1995), but I do love the attempt to send something so orchestral to a modern Eurovision Song Contest.

 

It was a fairly lackluster contest, and for once, I don't recommend watching the other songs, but I am waiting to see how "Marry Me" fares in May.  It's either going to sink like a dead weight or be a contender.  It should be pretty interesting...