Change ), Reasons why Occidentali’s Karma isn’t a winner. Sorry, this post was deleted by the person who originally posted it. You want to condense a life-changing belief system that’s been studied and refined by thousands of people over thousands of years, down to a slogan? The transition isn't great, but I'm glad they didn't speed up the song a lot and I don't think the song suffers too much. Focusing on his personal triumphs, he is able to ignore the rain. Viewed through the world of Sanremo, it was easy for Eurovision fans to fall in love with this song. We weren’t sure if Russia were going to turn up at all. Eurovision 2016 with new jury system. But the lyrics are weird. Occidentali’s Karma ist ein Popsong des italienischen Musikers Francesco Gabbani aus dem Jahr 2017. They kept the bridge intact, which IMO is the best part of the song. The riddle of Friend of a Friend. There are also plenty of Alés and the odd “sex appeal”. «Occidentali's Karma» —en español: «El Karma del occidental»— es una canción compuesta por Francesco Gabbani, Filippo Gabbani, Fabio Ilacqua y Luca Chiaravalli e interpretada en Italiano por Francesco Gabbani. But if you come back and step into the same river again, that water is long gone. Historically, there seem to be two meta-strategies for winning Eurovision (not counting sleazy vote-trading shenanigans). LOL! Okay, so maybe when we say “river” we aren’t talking about that specific water. It's still catchy and fun, first time listeners would be unlikely to suspect a thing! We’ve changed the animal’s species, because we’ve since learnt the lyrics and know that la scimmia nuda is dancing. It’s not so much that the song feels like it’s trying to go viral, as it feels like it’s trying to get itself annotated on Genius. Privacy Policy and This isn’t Italian, it’s ancient Greek:  a slogan attributed to the pre-Socratic philosopher Heraclitus. I still think it is possible for a good song to win Eurovision without resorting to English lyrics. Learning that nothing persists from moment to moment does not make me happy again, because it means that there’s no “again” in which to be happy, and no “me” to be happy in it! Italy had a problem: The song was a very packed, very tightly constructed 3:30. It’s going to be a harder sell to the public on 13 May. It’s still my favourite entry and I would like to stick my fingers in my ears and pretend it’s now a certain champion and always has been, but that wouldn’t be true. His song is not set up to elicit that sort of emotional response. We don’t know exactly how they plan to stage it, but Francesco is unlikely to be presented as the heroic figure conquering his demons that Måns, Conchita and Jamala all have been in very different ways. Cookies help us deliver our Services. Occidentali's Karma è un singolo del cantante italiano Francesco Gabbani, pubblicato il 9 febbraio 2017 come primo estratto dal terzo album in studio Magellano. Here you can find and discuss all about the world's longest running annual international televised song competition. Australia does the young male with a ballad a lot better than Bulgaria, for me. Check out his 50,000 word exegesis of Cowboy Bebop, his three-part series on plotting in early video games, or his alternate rules for Monopoly. So are you really stepping into the same river? Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in: You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Or as Heraclitus put it in another fragment, “We step and do not step into the same rivers; we are and are not.”. His energetic performance brought the show alive. Occidentali's Karma (Eurovision Version) 1. However, it still won’t have quite the same effect of breaking through the staid and formal setting in which Occidentali’s Karma had been placed. It sounds wrong, and I’m sure will still stand out to new listeners. Ale!" Francesco has an amazing stage presence (it's impossible to not dance along when you see him enjoying himself), so I'm hoping that it makes up for it via jury votes. Italy’s entry this year, “Occidentali’s Karma” by Francesco Gabbani, manages to pull off both strategies at once, which is a pretty neat trick. Heraclitus looks at the river, thinks about it very carefully, and decides that—all things considered—he himself probably doesn’t exist. It means “All things flow,” which on its own isn’t exactly informative. Ughhh, I'm a huge fan of this song as you can see by my flair, but this makes me nervous. To us, having the primate on stage is a (somewhat) logical extension of the lyrics and all makes sense. Not really. Remember, 50% of the score is the juries. It's well and good to say the limit should be extended to 3:30, but everyone involved knew they'd only have 3. Omg the French revamp is awful. I've tried many times to envision how they could get the song down to 3:00. what a nosense, of course it’s gonna win. The subreddit of the Eurovision Song Contest! Hmm, it’s almost like there’s some sort of… cosmic book-keeping system, in which every good or bad action gets paid back further down the line. It’s easy to just say panta rhei; the hard thing is to believe it. The transition from the first chorus to the second verse is a little jarring. Alternatively, the most Common Linnetsy act this year is Estonia. Maybe it’s fitting that, when we occidentals steamroll into a subcontinent, enslave its people, and repackage their sacred teachings as motivational posters and refrigerator magnets, we’re not actually able to absorb those teachings by consuming them in magnet form. What it definitely doesn't do is "kill the song". Not with the goofy, transgressive weirdness that a lot of B-type Eurovision songs typically adopt. D’you know what I mean? A few changes here and there in 2016, especially in the final (boosts for Ukraine, Sweden, Austria and Georgia, losses for Bulgaria, Malta and Israel), but nothing big. I thought that would've been enough. I hold hope that the gap will be filled in Kyiv by a big entrance for Geraldo the Gorilla. RELEASED APRIL 7, 2017 ℗ 2017 BMG RIGHTS MANAGEMENT (ITALY) S.R.L. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google You are here to symbolise the backward progression of evolution as we hypocritically seek simple answers to cope with our increasingly insulated modern selfie-culture. Powered by WordPress. Obviously the full version is gonna be better because 3 minutes is so little time, and this song is packed. About Stokes I agree, the second verse was great...but I heard that they couldn't have a reference to Chanel, which could have impelled them to cut out the whole thing. Occidentali’s Karma would be a slight departure from recent Eurovision winners by not being a unifying anthem about triumph over adversity. "Namaste! It's a shame they actually had to do both, but it makes sense for the contest. So how could you possibly combine these two worldviews? The Italian team is going to have a lot of work to do on its staging to telegraph the logic behind the appearance of Geraldo the Gorilla. With only ten songs chosen, the consensus was that Francesco Gabbani’s Occidentali’s Karma was a contender, but was most likely going to finish somewhere in the top ten. In a sense, writing a blog post that’s like, “Hey, here’s the real hidden meaning of ‘Occidentali’s Karma'” is just playing into Italy’s hands… but whatever, it’s just too juicy to resist. However, going for a native language does mean you have to work harder to get your universal message across. However, while Kristian is “up against the wall,” he doesn’t actually overcome anything. I hope the cut does better on stage than off, but it's a bit weird to have 3 choruses in a row. Sad to say that despite how I had thought that this was the absolute frontrunner at first, this is looking a little weaker now. Great song, but not so much a great entry. It has become even less familiar to our ears. (No seriously, he wrote the first post on the site.) “It’s simple, Geraldo. I also felt like some of the translations could have been better, but maybe I misunderstood the original lyrics? That makes Occidentali's Karma an overreach. Change ), You are commenting using your Facebook account. “Occidentali’s Karma” is a critique of this tendency — but it’s also an example of it. Francesco Gabbani may not come across as a hero, but that’s better than a poser on a travelator. We may need a big surprise to come through and challenge, in Common Linnets style. Still my number one, but definitely makes me nervous it won't win now (due to jury votes), while before I was pretty solid it would. (Quoting Heraclitus in the chorus of a Eurovision song is just about as authentic as getting an Etz haChayim tramp stamp.) As you already know if you’ve been following our Eurovision videos — and if you haven’t, why not start? Not like, stick-a-fork-in-it-it's-done dead, but definitely like, no-longer-likely-to-finish-in-the-top-5 dead. Panta rhei: all things flow. Designed by Wrather Creative using Roots Theme. But the lyrics are weird. Why force all those English words into the chorus and make sound so awkward? Looking through the forgotten acts, Norway may have some of the ingredients to surprise. I imagine the general reaction will be “lol there’s a dancing gorilla on stage, that is so Eurovision”. Komponiert und getextet wurde er von Gabbani, seinem Bruder Filippo sowie von Fabio Ilacqua und Luca Chiaravalli. Something hadn’t turned up at Melodifestivalen, something hadn’t turned up at Eesti Laul. Eurovision 2017 with new jury system. As an Amazon Associate Overthinking It earns from qualifying purchases. Great! Copyright © 2008–2020 Overthinking It. It’s not because it’s raining, it’s in spite of the rain. (I never get tired of telling people that Serge Gainsbourg’s “Poupée de Cire, Poupée de Son,” which is a stone cold classic, was also a Eurovision winner for Luxembourg in 1965.) While the song’s in a Foreign language, the language of music and of contemporary pop song structure is universal. 3:03 PREVIEW 1 SONG, 3 MINUTES. It doesn't appear in any feeds, and anyone with a direct link to it will see a message like this one. A potential benefit of Russia withdrawing this year is that we don’t need the noise cancelling technology and may be able to hear the crowd take the orchestra’s place in Kyiv. It’s not so much a matter of wanting to have our cake and eat it too, as it is of realizing that cake is an illusion that leads to suffering, enmeshing us in the endless, miserable cycle of birth and rebirth… and also, we really want to eat that cake. He's probably the guy to talk to if you want to pitch an article about music theory or horror movies. is the punchline of the whole song, and it doesn't work without the buildup. While Italy’s problems are very much their own, they are a favourite this year in a very similar way to Russia was in 2016. Because everybody knows that Eurovision fans don't like foreign languages and challenging lyrics, they just want to yell "Namaste! This wasn’t quite the cast-iron winner we were looking for. Even if the stage version makes the transition less jarring, it still brings a problem. It's still a song contest, and the juries are not going to vote for a repetitive singalong that doesn't go anywhere. Looks like you're using new Reddit on an old browser. Now you get to just have the slogan. General consensus has since relabelled Francesco’s dance partner as a monkey, but look at him. Serious miscalculation on their part, methinks. Anything that would have removed the sequence where the gorilla guy break dances would have seriously cut into Italy's chances to win it all. In part it was due to the fact that the good people at RAI had finally got round to announcing the winner of Sanremo 2017 – as is customary, they leave it until the delay is not funny any more, then wait another fifteen minutes. Francesco only had to do a little dance to stand out. ), Italy’s entry this year, “Occidentali’s Karma” by Francesco Gabbani, manages to pull off both strategies at once, which is a pretty neat trick. By using our Services or clicking I agree, you agree to our use of cookies. But cutting the second verse entirely and leaving the song as a single verse and the chorus 3 times seems like a mistake.