Sometimes, when a song and a performance hit your eardrum in just the right way, you can’t help but have a base, visceral reaction. Whether it’s making your heart beat faster over an incredible riff, feeling a wave of disgust or schadenfreude (or “skämskudde”, as they say here in Stockholm) over a train-wreck, getting your loins all twitterpated over an artist you fancy, or something so intangibly moving that it simply brings tears to your eyes, we all crave a moment where we can just let our reptilian brains react to a stimulus.
It has nothing to do with logic or reason. A song might face an uphill battle for qualification, but when it’s presented in just the right way, magic can happen. It happened in 2011, when Ewan and I were sitting in the arena watching Evelina Sašenko rehearse ‘C’est ma vie’, a song that had been basically ignored by the betting odds and OGAE vote. Even during her early run-throughs, most of the press room took perfunctory glances at the screens, then went back to checking Facebook. However, as we sat down and actually observed the proceedings, I felt the tingle of goosebumps grab me by the arms. At first, I thought little of it, being one of the first songs that I had seen performed live in the hall. But then Ewan leaned over to me and asked, “Is it just me, or was that actually really good?” We now refer to the unexpected shock of an underrated song plucking your heartstrings “a Sašenko”.
Evelina Sašenko played to our base instincts. (Credit: Elke Roels, EBU)
Without naming names (although, let’s be honest, I may spill the beans on a podcast, and I already have on Twitter), I had a moment like that today. A song that I had completely discounted early on in the proceedings thwacked me over the head and said “I’m here, dammit”, and like someone applying a still-humming tuning fork to the back of my skull, it simply reverberated. After two days of rehearsals that, while often fascinating and always entertaining, left me lukewarm at best, we finally had a song that gave me the autonomic response that I had been craving, for better or for worse.
And it brought tears to my eyes, for all the right reasons.
I normally get the goosebump ‘this might win’ feeling a couple of times a year, sometimes for acts that might even win! This year it was with my #1 and #2, Iceland and Serbia…
As for Evelina, I would have had the “getting your loins all twitterpated over an artist you fancy” reaction…but I am a visual sort of guy 😉
I had a Sašenko moment last year with the Hungarian entry. I’d heard it at least 5 or 6 times before watching SF1 and didn’t think it was good enough to qualify. At the end of Boggie’s performance I felt quite emotional and the impact of the song finally hit me. I think it needed the polished performance of the Eurovision stage and Boggie’s ability to look sincerely right down the camera to sell the emotion of the song.