The Eurovision Song Contest is the pinnacle of musical cheese on the Continent. In short, the contest works like this--European nations enter a native musical act in the contest. Each act is selected by telephone voting in each country. After the contestants are chosen, the winner of the whole contest is again chosen by telephone vote.
The acts themselves are rarely musicians who would or should be taken seriously. Many are purveyors of syrupy techno-pop that is coupled with banal lyrics. Last year's winner, a Finnish band called Lordi, sort of broke the Eurovision mold because they're a hard rock band. However, they don't win any originality points because they're essentially a rip-off of GWAR (at least from a cosmetic standpoint).
For some reason, Israel gets to compete in the contest. The country has won three times. The last time Israel won was in 1998, when transsexual singer Dana International took the prize with her song "Diva," which typifies the type of music that rules in the contest.
For this year's contest, which will take place in May in Finland, Israelis overwhelmingly chose "Push The Button" by Teapacks as their country's entrant. In the song, the band careens through musical styles, beginning in an Israeli folk/Balkan gypsy style and then shifting to rock. The bridge of the song is done in a grimy techno-rap. The lead singer, Kobi Oz, shifts languages along with musical genres, singing and rhyming in English, French, and Hebrew.
Truth be told, I find the song to be catchy in a perpetual-mental-tape-loop way. The lyrics, however, are causing some controversy. Here's a snippet from the English portion of the song:
The world is full of terror
If someone makes an error
He’s gonna blow us up to biddy biddy kingdom come
There are some crazy rulers, they hide and try to fool us
With demonic, technologic willingness to harm
They’re gonna push the button
push the button push the bu push the bu push the button
Many are interpreting the lyrics as an inflammatory and not so veiled reference to Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who, like other leaders in the region since the State of Israel's establishment, has threatened to wipe Israel off the map. The contest coordinators have received complaints are are apparently going to discuss whether the song should remain eligible for the contest.
For those who want an excellent perspective on Eurovision, The Believer did a great piece on the contest this past summer.
More on the song from the New York Times.
Enjoy:
4 comments:
The beginning of the song makes me think that Borat is trying to write a pop song.
The first thing I thought of was Chemical Brothers' "Galvanize" where they state that it's time to "push the button", but in their song, I think pushing the button is a good thing.
T - Yeah, the first time that I heard the song (during an NPR segment last week), I laughed.
Jason - Certainly not a good thing here, although I think that it will be awhile before Iran has an actual button to push.
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