Saudade Saudade – MARO
When our chums at Eurovision Ireland reviewed this in their fantastic “Review In 2” section of YouTube several weeks ago, there was some mentalist who was not at all pleased that their reviewer was not 100,000 percent happy with this song so … if you are reading this, you ain’t gonna like this that much but, like them, I don’t give a flying flamingo.
Saudade is a Portuguese word that I like to translate as “meh” or the linguistic equivalent of a Gallic shrug, whereby it epitomises the country and its outlook. This song goes to great lengths in the chorus to describe saudade as “nothing more than I can say, says it in a better way” – yeah thanks for that.
Casual viewers to this Contest who, after all, will be voting on this song, will NOT be hearing or seeing a thing of beauty, or a piece or art. They’ll be seeing the equivalent of a Portuguese prayer circle singing Kum Ba Yah with some clapping and finger symbols. People who think the Contest is their purview (and the Portuguese) think this kind of thing is brilliant but, spoiler alert: No.
You might like it, you might even be deluded enough to think that people other than you are going to actively going to pick the phone up and spend their currency on this. That all the jurors are going to think it’s the musical equivalent of the Mona Lisa rather than a copy of the Fallen Madonna with the Big Boobies.
It literally is background lift/lobby music and, as I have said before … if a song can only illicit apathy amongst televoters, then that is even worse than downright hate.
Phil’s Score -1 Point