From Azerbaijan with camp

After a series of long, heavy articles, I figure I should provide my readers with a "musical interlude", with videoclips from the best to the worst. 

 
Singing to the mortals

The first video below is the entry from the Republic of Azerbaijan to the 42-nation Eurovision 2008 contest -- the country's first-ever entry -- and is by the duo Elnur and Samir. It was one of the hot favourites leading up to the contest, but alas, didn't win, and I'll show you why later.

Going by the promotional video, Day after day is pretty good compositionally, though the lyrics are juvenile. But what is most striking about it is how the video is infused with  homoeroticism, and camped up with wild abandon:

Elnur Huseynov (the one playing the angel) is 21 years old. Born in 1987 in  Ashkhabad, in the Republic of Turkmenistan, his mother is a musician theorist. and he's had music lessons since age five. He's also trained as a stylist and hairdresser, though if his music career takes off, that may become history.

Samir Javadzadeh (the one playing the devil) was born 1980 in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, He studied at the University of Business, Department of International Economic Relations, though it's not clear whether he graduated. For about three years he was a front man of Sharon, a popular band, proceeding with a solo career after that.

Many readers may never have heard of Azerbaijan, and in a way this example shows how pop musicians can be ambassadors for a country.

Azerbaijan was formerly part of the Soviet Union. Today it's an independent republic with an area of 86,600 sq km (i.e. about two-thirds the size of peninsular Malaysia) and a population of 8.2 million (2008 estimate). 

Its GDP per capita (on the basis of purchasing power parity) is about US$9,000, much increased in recent years due to oil and gas, which makes up 90% of the country's exports. Even so, US$9,000 isn't much, giving them a standard of living about the same as Thailand. 

Islam is the religion of 93% of the country's population, which may be an interesting fact because too many people around the world think of Muslim countries as being conservative. Yet you have these two camping it up, and still winning the popular vote in a national TV contest to become their country's representatives to Eurovision.

The majority (90%) of the population are Azeris, an ethno-linguistic group from the Turkic family -- which includes the Uighurs of Xinjiang, China (old name: East Turkestan), the Kazakhs, Uzbeks and Kyrgyz of Central Asia, and the Turks of Turkey. You would have noticed, though, that Elnur and Samir chose to sing Day after Day in English -- probably to get more votes for the Eurovision contest. This is quite common in Eurovision. 2008 was the fifth time in the 53-year history of the contest that all the top 3 winners had sung in English.

Here is the indeciperable English of Russia's entry Believe by Dima Bilan at Eurovision's Final held on 24 May in Belgrade. It's a forgettable song and a forgettable performance, but it emerged as Eurovision 2008's winner:

Dima Bilan also represented Russia in 2006 with Never let you go. See his performance here. 

You'll understand how Azerbaijan lost when you see Elnur and Samir's live stage performance for the contest itself. It was mostly screaming, completely over the top, off-pitch at times and the two of them hardly moved from their positions despite a large stage. 

 
Believe it or not, this kind of standard is almost par for the course for Eurovision. It, alas, has long acquired the reputation of a silly-fest of sugary pop, with contestants doing anything for the sake of a spectacle, except sing well. This stands in contrast to American Idol Season 7 whose final was held just a few days earlier, on 20 May in Los Angeles.

 
Singing to the gods

In a way, this year's Idol contest was all too predictable. 25-year-old David Cook and 17-year-old David Archuleta stood head and shoulders above the rest from quite early in the competition. Both gave flawless performances almost every time they went up on stage -- with the decider often left to a question of how they reinvented the song -- to the point where the audiences forgot how amazingly good they were. 

The younger David had a huge fan base, the older David had going for him his sheer originality and the way he invested himself in every song he sang, often overcome with tears by the time he was finished. 

Here are six videos. The first is David Cook's third song from the Finals (his own choice of song for the night unlike the 1st and 2nd songs which were chosen for him by others), but which was slammed by judge Simon Cowell as a bad song choice. It's The world I know by the group Collective Soul (1995):

Immediately following that was David Archuleta's 3rd song (his personal choice for the night). He's a boy with an immense gift for musicality and a voice as a clear as bells -- here singing Imagine by John Lennon (1971) and breathing new life into a song twice as old as himself:

The third video was probably the performance that made everyone sit up and take notice of David Cook -- Chris Cornell's 2007 version of Michael Jackson's 1983 hit Billy Jean -- which Cook sang during the Top Ten:

When the contestants were down to the last four, David Archuleta pulled out all the stops, even though he was required to choose from the Rock-n-roll Hall of Fame (i.e. relatively old classics). He had to perform two songs that night and this was the first of two - Stand by me, by Ben E King, 1960:

Then for his second song in the Top Four, he took one of the most famous songs ever -- a huge risk, but he pulled it off, making it his own. Here's Love me tender, by none other than Elvis Presley (1956):

The last video in this set is probably the most moving of all in the entire competition. The first time ever I saw Your face, an old song by Roberta Flack, was chosen by Simon Cowell for David Cook, as one of the mandatory song choices for Cook's Top Three performance. 

(I recommend you watch the Roberta Flack version first -- see box at right -- before listening to David Cook, the better to appreciate what he did with it.)

As the comment on YouTube said, "His mom was standing up in the audience and it was as if he was singing it to her. I could just imagine her looking down at her newborn baby David and him looking up at her."

In case you didn't know by now, David Cook, 25, won the 7th season of American Idol. Archuleta was a worthy second.

© Yawning Bread 

Footnotes

None

Addenda

None