Azerbaijan: Aisel – X My Heart

Martin: And so we begin. This wasn’t a totally unexpected choice of opener for the first semi-final, and purely musically I can see the logic. It’s a straight-down-the-middle pop song, almost surprisingly mainstream by the standards of the established Azerbaijan-Sweden axis, which has tended to throw up songs with ethnic hints (“Start A Fire”, “Hour Of The Wolf”) or at least a healthy dose of edginess (“Hold Me”, “Miracle”, last year’s horse-head antics). “X My Heart” is positively poppy by comparison, so it’s not a huge surprise that it’s been chosen to start the show, especially as Aisel seems like a competent and friendly performer.

But never mind that. Let’s get to the point: how bad are the lyrics? The “firewalls/cannonballs” rhyme alone would be enough to get the song laughed out of the building, long before we even get to the Dadaist conceptual poetry that is “luna moon me up”. In other words, the whole thing is very, very silly. And while nobody really watches the Eurovision Song Contest for the lyrics (and the song is good), I do wonder if Azerbaijan will be punished – at least by the supposedly professional juries – for sending something quite so unashamedly dumb.

Shi: Stop, don’t say that it’s impossible, ’cause I know it’s possible. Come here, my sweet chocolate boy. I began to cry a lot and she gave me apricots. You make me want your aphrodisiac. (From: “Songs juries placed in the top 5 of ESC semis”, Vol. 1.)

Felix: Besides being one of the weaker imports from Sweden, it’s also indeed one of just a few happy songs in this year’s line-up, which will help. I quite like it, and I doubt that non-native English speakers, jury or not, would rate it down for its nonsense lyrics.

video and title image source: eurovision.tv