May 20, 2013

821/917 Ping Pong: Be Happy (Israel 2000)

The Eurosong 821 was requested by Asko Murtomäki, the former Eurovision expert of the Finnish broadcasting company YLE. Ping Pong was a israeli pop group that took part in the local selection as a joke. When chosen to represent Israel they made controversial changes to their act and made the israeli authorities withdrew all their support from the entry.


The opening song of the 2000 Eurovision Song Contest looked quite a haphazard entity. A group of strangely dressed young people jumping and running around, singing something that sounded vaguely like a tune and shouting  the title Be happy among the otherwise hebrew lyrics. No wonder the song received only handful of points and 22th place (among 24 participants) in the final results list. The controversial lyrics (apparently, as very few of the audience understood hebrew) and the waving of Syrian flags caused some controversy, but mainly within the Israeli delegation. For others it was just a fun number easily forgotten.

The melody of the song is actually quite good and the bridge (where the soloists sings about her lover in Damascus) alters the mood nicely. The song has an interesting structure and works well as the opener of the contest. The group, however,  manages to make a total mashs out of the performance so this is definately not one of the better songs from the 2000 contest. If interested, I'd suggest you find the recorded version of the song (with the hebrew title Sameach) which gives you better idea what the song actually is like.

My points 2/5

PS. is there a Eurovision entry that you would like me to write about? Comment on this blog or send me a tweet (to mikko_suhonen) and I'm sure to put your song in my list. The only condition is that the song has taken part in the Eurovision song contest between 1956 and 2003.

2 comments:

  1. Hello Mikko,

    what an amazing blog. I'd like to read what's on your mind about Se eu te pudesse abraçar (Portugal 1998).

    -jukka k.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you for your comment. It is nice to know that someone actually is reading these short articles.

      You request will be coming to this blog shortly. I'm happy for your contribution.

      Delete