SWEDEN 2011 - Popular

The perfect way to end this year's reviews - both slamming and praising the Swedes ... !!? :-D

I am SO torn about this entry. I both love it and hate it. I don't know which side to come down on. In one way, this song sucks so hard ... but at the same time it's fantastic. My brain, it hurts ... !! o_O

OK, some details: I LOVE the music. The beat is so fantastic and I just love it, I've listened to it umpteen times already, it totally kicks ass. The intro especially, but just basically the whole thing is fantastic! I love it. It rocks. Because of the music and the incredible catchiness of it, I think this song is going to do extremely well. Maybe a little too well for my countrymen's tastes ... ! :-o

And in some ways it absolutely doesn't deserve to do well AT ALL. In some ways it deserves to totally bomb. This is one of those songs where I wish so much that the lyrics were in some foreign language that I couldn't understand. Because the lyrics are what kill this song for me. I loathe and despise the lyrics. They are horrendous, ridiculous, embarrassing. Complete & utter crap. Fredrik Kempe is getting to be a real ESC vet, but ... I mean, he's written some clunkers, but come on. This is what comes of being as crazy prolific as he is. It reminds me of the opening scene in Once In A Lifetime, with the guy accosting Mona on her way to the subway. Fredrik Kempe is that guy. For those of you who haven't seen the movie, that is not a compliment. I have a hard time getting my head around the fact that these lyrics were written by a man who's almost 40 years old. o_O

Basically the lyrics make the singer sound like a totally immature jerk and the biggest douche you've ever met. I'm not sure I even get the story. That's because it's so dumb that I can hardly take it in. The guy likes a girl, but she's such a shallow stuck up bitch that she only goes for popular guys? So ... he's going to ... be on So You Think You Can Dance ... and be a celebrity ... so he'll be popular too ... and then she'll let him fuck her? Is that it? I really think that's it. Even though I can hardly believe that that can be it.

Sure, there are a lot of superficial lyrics in this contest. It's not where you go for profundity and depth. But this song really takes the fucking cake. How shallow can you get?? You might not think it to read this, but I was speechless the first time I heard this song.

But as I said, the music is fantastic, and since large sections of the audience either know no English or know so little of it that they won't catch the lyrics anyway, this song may end up doing very well indeed. Which may be sad, because my dreams for our entry is 1) that we'll get to the final and 2) (which maybe should be 1) that we'll beat the Swedes. I'm not at all sure about that this year.

But hey, you don't want to miss this, so check it out for yourselves. This is Eric Saade performing Popular by Fredrik Kempe. He'll be competing for Sweden on Thursday, May 12th.

Widescreen here.

Incredibly awful lyrics here.