10 Reasons To Love Croatia. And 10 Reasons Not To

We’ve reached the entry in this year’s competition it’s impossible to agree on. Is Croatia totally, utter crap or is it in fact a masterpiece of epic proportions? After weeks of shouty rows over Facebook chat without reaching any sort of agreement, we have decided to follow Jacques Houdek’s advice and just be friends. So here’s the split vote for you from the Good Evening Europe HQ. You can figure out yourselves which is the jury vote and which is the public vote.

10 reasons to love the Croatian entry:

1. It combines the best of two worlds, really. Hollywood and Milan. The total lack of Zagreb and Dubrovnik is not our problem. Not at all.

2. And the fact that Jacques Houdek knows how to sing both melodramatic ballads and Puccini arias in one song shows how extremely talented this guy is. We hope he gets to play the main part in Disney’s new production Aladdin vs Madama Butterfly the musical.

3. What do we want? More Italian in Eurovision. When do we want it? NOW!

4. After suffering through all those tender, whispering men in this year’s competition, one really does learn to appreciate the value of a strong tenor

5. There will be violins. There can never be too many violins in Eurovision. Especially not those who take a little crazy turn in the middle bridge.

6. Who doesn’t want to be this guy’s friend?

7. Jacques Houdek even wants to promote the sense of togetherness. Which we sense is much needed in our host country this year.

8. Jacques says life is a miracle. This is how we feel every morning when we wake up alive after yet another late night at EuroClub, so we figure it will be quite a theme song for Kyiv.

9. We have high hopes for what this guy might be able to do in EuroClub, as he certainly moves like Jacquer, raises us up, becomes our hero and is able to share the greatest love of all.

10. And there has never, we repeat: never been an entry that fits better with the term “dirty pleasure”. What pathos! What melodrama! What emotional rollercoaster! We are ready for you, James! Take it away!

10 reasons to hate the Croatian entry:

1. My Friend is described as a duet sung by one vocalist, two songs in one. Two voices, two languages, two characters – two completely different personalities in one person co-existing and collaborating. No thanks, we find it to be deeply disturbing, and recommend quite a few sessions of psychotherapy to get that sorted.

2. In our experience, people who feel the urge to start quoting Einstein are not exactly rocket scientists. We’ve seen enough of that sort of spam on our Facebook feeds already; please don’t start contaminating Eurovision songs with it as well.

3. It’s popera. Unless your name is Gianluca, Piero and Ignazio and you happen to be part of a certain Italian trio, just don’t.

4. Making use of the most beautiful language in the world has its obligations. We can’t see the use being justified here.

5. We just cannot see how this will actually work live. We’ve heard of people marring themselves, which of course is completely bonkers, still we can sort of accept the fact that it’s doable. But how can one person actually sing a duet alone, live on stage? Will there be a hologram? Will his suit be half black, half white? Will he have two microphone stands, running from one to the other? Come to think of it, this could turn out to be a reason to love this entry; we might have to move this bullet point to the other list.

6. We are extremely skeptical towards artists who dream about healing people with their voice. We are strong advocates for evidence-based medicine.

7. Let’s all sing a little song and just be friends! The song’s message is banal, oversimplifying and verging on being insulting towards people who really make an effort to resolve conflicts, create understanding and finding ways of overcoming differences and disagreements. This year’s contest should show how hard THAT is in the real world.

8. We suspect My Friend to be EBU’s secret theme song this year.

9. Croatia should have provided us with a Balkan ballad. WHERE’S OUR BALKAN BALLAD THIS YEAR?

10. Jacques Houdek seems like a genuinely likable guy. We don’t want good guys to sing crappy songs; it makes it so much harder to hate it with the proper gusto and conviction.

Jacques Houdek – get two for the price of one! Photo credit: Damian Fiket

8 comments

  1. Side 2! Still, I’m very curious to find out how they’re gonna stage this piece of hideousness to make it really dangerous in a Somewhere Got Talent kind of way.. As a positive thought, Croatia is notoriously untalented as far as that kind of thing goes, so we (side 2 and me) probably will have nothing to worry about!

  2. “Do your best, take a chance, dare to dream and make it real …” Banal, yes, cliched, yes, but somehow irresistibly … elevating! LOVE IT!

    1. Hm, one of us are starting to think you are not as smart as you look like! Kind regards, Astrid OR Guri

  3. Fair comment, but who will be smarter than they look when Jacques lands on the left-hand side on 13th May?

    1. Ok, this is getting too complicated for us, so we will just answer “waffle” on this one.

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