Seriously, though, what on earth has HRT done to the contest? Their entrant, Jacques Houdek – who has tried numerous times for Croatia, so knows what the game is all about you’d have thunk – finally got the call to participate and the nets rejoiced. “It’s about time he got through,” they said. “It’ll be a half decent entry,” they said …
Oh how wrong can you be? Well, for starters … this wrong:
I’m writing this as I listen to Houdek’s “song” again. It’s a cross between Michael Jackson in his worst balladeer period, and a souped-up Disney song. Then your man sings a clearly different song, which has been superglued to the back of the MJ ballad.
It’s got the feel of a song written as a duet, but the second singer has either been sacked off or forgotten. Jacques does his best Tommy Cooper impression, and sings both parts, one in faux-opera, and one falsetto.
The first time I heard this, I got to precisely seven seconds before my ear lobes screamed, “Enough already”. But then I started to think that someone (or some people) at HRT have not only listened to this song, but have accepted it as the best. They’ve signed-off public money to spend on promotion because … “it’s a good idea”.
If we are being totally honest, whoever made that decision needs to be removed from post immediately.
When the demo came to HRT, I presume that sensible people listened. I can’t believe for one moment that someone didn’t say, “You know, this just doesn’t sound right …” Perhaps they were overruled. Maybe everyone decided they had an off-the-wall winner.
Newsflash. You don’t.
HRT has not, it seems to me, put any time or effort into their 2017 Eurovision song search. Worse yet, the broadcaster has made a cardinal error in allowing the artist to submit his own song. What’s worse, it transpires that six (yes, really six) people had a hand in writing it. Did none of them, at any point question their own work? So much for quality control.
‘My friend’ feels rushed, it sounds horrific and will struggle to find a natural constituency to vote for it.
“Normal” Thursday night televoters are not going to vote for this. It sounds disjointed, it has no natural beat, and Lord only knows how its going to look on stage … although I can imagine the Croatian team have plans to ‘big Jacques up’ (no pun intended)
Juries are going to see right through it. It’s got no hit quality. They’ll see and hear a ridiculously-voiced performance that fails to tick a single box. In fact, the only people who could possibly pick up the phone are the drunks of Europe. So Jacques can perhaps count on the UK’s 12.
Entries like this send the contest back to the dark ages.
I’m not saying that it has no right to be in the contest, but surely there were better thought-out songs than this cobbled-together piece of crap?
Weren’t there?
Whilst I agree with everything you say Phil, for some unknown reason, I cannot stop listening to this – I’ve had it on repeat for hours. Perhaps I should be seeking urgent medical advice 🙂
I have absolutely no idea how it will do – it’ll be down to the staging and how well he can cope with singing both parts live. But I wouldn’t rule out seeing this I the final