(This is a -probably bad- translation of a post on Bizarre Love Triangle. Check the original if you're actually spanish or if you think that you can learn a fantastic new language by comparing two bits of text, like Tom Hanks in "Terminal")
The culture pages of the spanish media hardly acknowledged yesterday's great event; some can't tell the trees for the forest and highlight the 3rd International Congress on the Spanish Language instead. Others somehow turn the "
return to rock & roll" from the U2 presskits into big news and put yesterday's triumph aside. Nobody nowhere is up to the task of answering what was asked in Lillehammer yesterday:
why on earth Spain doesn't send songs like "Antes muerta que sencilla" to Eurovision (the senior festival)?
You can blame Remedios Amaya, whose "Quién maneja mi barca" is part of what some people consider spanish music's most embarrasing moments, and its scandalous failure reinforced the notion that Spain shouldn't revel in sending something so knowingly exotic for the rest of Europe. A tendency that climaxed during the nineties, when except for a few nice moments it seemed that the song that represented Spain was being choosen by people who actually hated Eurovision; the kind of person who celebrated Rosa's "
failure" with "Europe's Living A Celebration", even if it showed that by putting the election of the track in the hands of the TV audience the worse that could be said was that Spain now wanted to get and give joy (and don't mention Beth's "Dime"; it only proves what happens when you send to the festival an artist who doesn't like Eurovision... it didn't do so bad, anyway).
We can call it poetic justice, because the songwriter behind "Quien maneja mi barca", José Manuel Évora, is the missing link between Remedios Amaya's failure and María Isabel's success. He wrote the song "Me pongo colorada" that turned Papa Levante, his daughter's band, into a sensation a few years ago, and its marrying of modern pop culture and andalusian mischief is the basis to the even superior "Antes muerta que sencilla".
But would this track have worked so good in the adult Eurovision Festival? Keeping in mind that the fact that the rest of Europe can't understand the humor in the lyrics* haven't stopped this track from being the most acclaimed of the contest, I like to think that it's attractive enough sound-wise, with an exhuberance not very far away from last years' winners. Anyway, María Isabel López's performance its vital to the track's success, naive enough not to fall into the somewhat condescendent Bebe territory, or the muddy Rakel Winchester one.
I hope "Antes muerta que sencilla" is in mind when the time comes to choose the tracks that could represent Spain in next year's Festival. Or, like someone in the Eurovision chat room in SoulSeek said yesterday, let's send Azucar Moreno once again!
María Isabel - Antes Muerta Que Sencilla.
*The songtitle is an spanish catchphrase that could be translated as "I'd rather be dead than average", and it's a cheeky ode to cheap glamour and the fun that goes with it.
-
Diego.
