Not only do I not have my finger on the pulse of popular music, but it seems I don’t even have it on the pulse of music from two decades ago either. I read many social media status updates announcing excitement at The Rasmus entering Finland’s UMK festival, but despite racking up a huge number 3 hit in my country I’d never heard of them. Having added to In The Shadows’ 100 million plus Spotify streams to check it out I can also confirm I’d never heard IT either. But plenty of people have, helping the group to local success and to the Eurovision stage.
If it ain’t broke, why deviate from a genre that brought you great success last time? Rock music feels almost like Finland’s national style, as traditionally Finnish as Sibelius, or the hangover I’ll have after a night of yummy Lonkero. Thematically Jezebel describes the impact of being chewed up and spat out by the kind of woman whose name has become synonymous with the wild antics of the character in the song.
This was well performed in UMK, and will undoubtedly find support at Eurovision, although personally it’s not to my taste. Will we see a second consecutive top 10 Finnish finish? I wouldn’t bet against it.
My marks: 6 points