For those of you who think of Finland as a country chuck full of mute, distant people filled with melancholia and infinite sadness, here’s an effective energy pill to cure you from such misconceptions.
We’re not sure how we feel about being deprived of our own bias towards the Finns though. And after all tales of loss and sorrow told in minor key often make great art. Happy people celebrating their carefree existence too often fall under the category good for them, not very interesting to the rest of us. Not that we don’t sense a certain ambiguity in Sandhja’s preach it song. The crude social realism in the preview video makes this abundantly clear in a manner that would make even the Kaurismäki brothers proud. Sing it away has a positive, uplifting message, but not in a “I’m so goddamn happy I’m about to burst like a bloody balloon” kind of way. It’s all about being happy and cheerful despite all your troubles. Now if that’s not profound enough for you we suggest that you go and read a book or something.
We feel the need to mention a couple of concerns we have with this number. One being whether the cropped tops, metallic hotpants, bicolored hair, backwards caps and glittery Dr. Martens will end up on stage in Globen. We would much prefer these accessories remained in the 90s where they belong. Moreover we fear that Sandhja and her crew will fail to inject the amount of energy and drive into the performance needed to get the crowd on their feet and the voters to pick up their phones. It’s placed in the first semi-final and it simply doesn’t strike us as the kind of song people will go wild over on a Tuesday night. Sometimes there’s nothing harder than the strife to make it past the qualification round a wise man never said, but we’re saying it now, and we’re prepared to stand by it in May.
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