EuroVision ’18 Song By Song: “Dance You Off” by Benjamin Ingrosso, Sweden
eCinemaOne, The Kirkham Report, and Planet BiblioMusica will have daily coverage of the days counting down to the Eurovision Song Contest 2018!
Over the coming weeks, sometimes more than once a day, we will bring you daily previews of the contest, spotlighting each of the songs individually in random order, where they come from, who will be performing them, and more, as well as some historical info on the contest and some of the past winners and participants.
Next up on our Song-By-Song preview is the official entry from Sweden, “Dance You Off” by Benjamin Ingrosso, written by Ingrosso, MAG, Louis Schoorl, and K Nita. The song is performed in English. 20-year-old Ingrosso has been active in the entertainment industry since childhood, both as a singer and as an actor. The song will be performed 15th in the competition order on the second semi-final on May 10.
I’m not going to mince words here — I don’t know WHAT everyone sees in this song; I am TOTALLY mystified by its popularity, because it seems to be one of the real fan favorites among EuroVision fans, and I’m sorry (I guess) but Ijust can’t agree with them — I ABSOLUTELY LOATHE this song — it is truly a piece of shit from beginning to end. The song is bad, the performance is terrible, the video is absolutely awful; in short there is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING GOOD about this song. Sweden should have been more careful when selecting this year’ song; because they weren’t, now they have to live with it, much like Ireland back in the early teens and the love affair they had with the twins in Jedward that saw that no-talent duo represent the country in EuroVision TWICE — two years in a row. OMG WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?? In the case of this song, it’s not even an original idea — to me, it seems like someone took the lyrics of Gotye’s Grammy-winning masterpiece Somebody That I Used To Know, dumbed them down so that pre-teens can figure out what it’s about, and put a routine, unimaginative, stereotypical EuroDance beat to it. BLECK! Seriously, here is a 20-year-old singer who sounds like he’s 14, looks like he’s pushing 30 in the video, kind of mindlessly dancing around trying to stomp out a lost love. REALLY? By all accounts the song is probably going to do okay to even somewhat well with the televoting, so it’s up to the country-by-country juries to stomp this bland, repetitive, unapologetic piece of EuroDance trash into the ground as hard as they possibly can…PLEASE!!! Am I being TOO harsh? I don’t think so. And the sad thing is that it would probably be a big hit in the US Clubs…and maybe on the dance charts too…bleah….
Sweden has been active in EuroVision since 1958, sending 57 songs to the contest. They have topped the Grand Final six times, first in 1974 with the song that was voted EuroVision’s all time Grand Champion on the occasion of the contest’s 50th anniversary, ABBA’s career launching “Waterloo”; and also with “Digga-Loo Diggi-Ley” by Herries, 1984 (there’s those nonsense titles again…); “Fangad av en stormvind” by Carola, 1991; “Take Me To Your Heaven” by Charlotte Nilsson, 1999; “Euphoria” by Loreen, 2012; and “Heroes” by Mans Zelmerlow in 2015. They have made almost every final in the last decade, missing only in 2010.
Here’s the official music video — judge for yourself!
Join eCinemaOne, The Kirkham Report, and Planet BiblioMusica each day through the finals on May 12 — be sure to check each site, because some of the features will be exclusive to just one of the sites! The daily artist and song profiles will appear on each site, with some past winners and historical info coming to TKR and PlanetBM in the next week or so as I complete my research!
In case you’re interested, I will post my list of all 43 songs in the order of my favorites at the end of our song by song preview in early May, so keep tuned in! This weekend is going to be full, with FOUR song by song profiles each day, so we will have time at the end of the profiles to do some favorites and not-so-favorites…
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Catch all the official EuroVision action at their official Website and on their official YouTube channel! And don’t forget to watch the show May 12 on LogoTV!
Originally published at eCinemaOne.
