I have the honor of presenting the next Overthinking It Eurovision video! Check our Lee’s take on Malta, Norway and Albania here, and Belinkie’s awesome intro video to figure out what all the fuss is about. Hope you enjoy Bulgaria, Belarus, Latvia:
In case you want to see the originals in their full glory, here’s Elitsa Todorova and Stoyan Yankulov with “Samo Shampioni (Only Champions),” here’s Alyona Lanskaya with “Solayoh,” and here’s PeR, with “Here We Go.”
For more videos from Overthinking It, including our coverage of Eurovision 2013, subscribe to our YouTube channel.
Nice use of “ennui”!
Thanks! Especially because “Eurovision Video” and “Nice use of ennui” are not generally known to go together!
“Samo Shampioni” – Is that? Yes, that’s a drum set in the shape of the tree of life. I think we’re done here.
The video is already pretty stilted — I could have just called it “Bulgaria and two other places” and just made it 90% “Only Champions.” Looking forward to seeing how it does in the semis!
I couldn’t help but think that “Only Champions” is actually a song about the Hunger Games. “The Bravest in the Games”? “Only Champions” because everyone else is dead. Until they got to the line “Give us the happy ones” because from what I remember, no one is happy in the Hunger Games.
PeR looks like they stole their outfits from Fun!, which makes me hate them more because they actually make Fun! look good by comparison. Ugh, I hate Fun!.
Solayoh on the other hand sounds like Ricky Martin could bust in at any moment, which completely fits the theme of Eurovision being a reverb of American pop culture a decade late.
You’re punctuation is all wrong! It’s not Fun(!). It’s Fun(.). Actually, I think it might be fun(.). It’s not an exciting thing, but merely a declaration of fun, or more likely the concept of fun. It does not seem like any fun is to be had. I certainly don’t find their music fun to listen to.
No parentheses–it’s just “fun.” Starts with a lowercase f, ends in a period.
I actually really enjoy their music. At the same time, I could see them making great Eurovision contestants, mostly because their music is catchy as all hell.
The parentheses were merely to separate strange band name punctuation from actual punctuation. Plus, any instance of somebody typing out a (.) is always a way to reel in the snickering teen ager audience.
Yeah, I realized the mistake after I had always posted the comment, but without editing ability I decided to ignore. I blame “We Are Young” for turning me off fun.. The chorus just grates with me, I actually enjoy the verses quite a bit (I love melodic speaking), but slow wailing is not appealing to me.
Samo Shampioni was fine but it’s not a song I feel the need to ever listen to again. I did like the use of drums and whatever that bagpipe-like instrument was. It was also a plus that the drummers seemed really excited while the guy playing the other instrument seemed like the singer’s uncle who they barely managed to convince to put on a dress shirt.
Solayoh was… not good. I could only make it halfway through the video. If something incredible happens in the second half, someone let me know.
Here We Go was tolerable. Random question for international overthinkers: Is there a certain accent you try and mimic if you’re taught English in a country where English isn’t the dominant language or where the population is highly multilingual? It was just something I thought of while watching this entry.
I don’t know about Europe, but in the US Midwest, where I took choir as a class all through high school, we were taught to sing with a British accent – apparently when you round your mouth out for a “British” sound you get better breath support and richer tone, and the audience doesn’t notice the “accent” when you’re singing the same way they would when talking.