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I mentioned the false Käärijä effect back while reviewing the Croatian entry. It’s the assumption that Cha Cha Cha was just a bit mad rather than having genuine musical integrity and charm, and entering a song which is just daft, not good. You might have expected the Finns themselves not to fall for it, but meet Windows95man, and, well…
Mr Windows95man is the alter ego character of Finnish visual artist and DJ Teemu Keisteri. For No Rules! Teemu is teamed with Henri Piispanen, who carries most of the singing. It’s a deliberately madcap song of liberation, living under nobody’s rules but your own, with nary a care in the world about what you look like. Except Windows95man does care about what he looks like. A lot. In fact, it’s kind of the basis of his entire act.
What he looks like is a twat. The act, at least for the performance of this song, is him being born out of a denim egg and pretending to run about the stage naked from the waist down whilst his genital area gets obscured by strategically placed dancers and props when the camera cuts to him. Henri meanwhile struts about and does most of the singing. Windows95man is eventually delivered of a pair of Daisy Dukes from heaven above to cover his modesty (don’t worry, he’s had some wildly unflattering flesh-toned pants on all the while).
There’s an air of smugness about the whole thing which turns me right off. The smugness turns briefly in the knowledge that his trademark Windows 95 t-shirt and cap breech Eurovision’s non-commercial clause so have had to be blurred out in the official version of the music video, an effect which looks fucking awful on screen.
I dislike just about everything about this. I can’t say it’s all bad, as on first (unblurred) performance in Finland’s UMK national final parts did raise a small titter from me, but I really don’t want to see a Eurovision trajectory that reverts to this kind of nonsense. Give me fun, yes, but make it good. This is just so naff.
Photo: Miikka Varila/EBU