TURKEY 2009: Hadise - Düm Tek Tek

Two down and ... forty-one to go?? :-D

Turkey chose their entry in a New Year's Eve extravaganza broadcast on TRT. The singer, Hadise Açıkgöz, has Turkish parents, but was born and raised in Belgium. She'll be the first ever performer to represent Turkey in the ESC who has not been born there. But she pursues her music and TV career in both countries and in her music she's known for mixing Turkish rhythms with more western r'n'b elements. Personally I'm not familiar with her music but from what I know the ESC entry is pretty typical of what she normally does.

Turkey has competed in the ESC since 1975 (they haven't participated every year though). They traditionally haven't been among the ESC heavies, so to speak; they've finished last three times, and have only managed a top ten result six times out of the 30 entries that they've sent. For Riga 2003 Turkish broadcasters got tired of their lousy track record and decided to pull out all the stops - this extra effort paid off and they ended up winning with the very catchy Everyway That I Can. This year's song is ... not entirely dissimilar from that winning entry. ;-)

My thoughts? I like it. And I like it more every time I hear it. Of course, compared with the Albanian entry, this is on a whole other level. :-) The performance is good - perhaps not to my taste, but it's professional and works well with the song. That 'signature' dance move is a good idea, it'll help the audience to remember the song. (I bet the choreographer is already dreaming of seeing that move on dance floors all around the Mediterranean this summer ... and that dream will probably come true. :-) The singer's pretty good - she's got a relatively good voice and she's confident on stage. A professional entry that blends exotic Turkish rhythms into a more modern and western whole. I think this will do well ...

... but it's not the winner. I'd be very surprised if this song wins. It's too much of a dance tune, and in this presentation too sexy and too 'young' - the older generations won't really get this. Turkey can hold their heads up this year though. :-) But see for yourselves - this is Düm Tek Tek by Hadise Açıkgöz and Stefan Fernande, performed by the former who with Mr Fernande will be competing for Turkey.

The title is untranslatable into English, apparently. :-) The rest of the [pretty stupid] lyrics are in English. Read them here.

Update, April: I'm taking back what I first wrote in this post. The more I listen to this song - and, not least, now that I've heard all the competitors ;-) - the better my impressions of this entry's chances are getting. This may well be the winner. Or if not, I'm convinced that Turkey will do very very well this year.