The staging of this song was rather unprecedented. A few days before the show the Danish government banned gatherings of over 1000, meaning that the Danish national final went on as planned - but with no audience. This was quite the shame is the new arena in Copenhagen was done out beautifully and had some great lighting effects and also situated an orchestra in between the two runways. Ben is in dark top and trousers with a nice chequered jacket on top, plus his guitar. Tan is in a white half jacket-half camisole number with thigh high black boots. They do a fair amount of walking and moving (although Ben stood about a bit more so he can play guitar and sing at the same time) There are a lot of ABBA-esque angles with one singing facing front and one side on. There is not a lot of interacting between the two of them and if the song is about their feelings for eachother, this seems a little incongruous. The backdrop is mainly gold and black in different forms. During the chorus the word "YES" appears in gold behind them. Near the end this is also accompanied by lots of gold pyro effects, although they fall short of the 'winners' pyro curtain.
Being a duet, some parts are soung solo and some parts together so although the structure of the song is rather straightforward they are able to switch things up a little by changing the tone or melody depending on who is singing what. We start with the verse which is in 7/8 time but does not feel rushed or awkward and if you were listening causally you might not even notice. We then go straight into 2 renditions of the chorus chant which this then followed by an instrumental with the backing singers 'oooohing' on top. These parts are very drum heavy, almost military style . We then have another verse and double chorus followed by more ooooohing. Here the duo move right around the stange from the top right top to the tip of the runway. Here we have a brief bridge leading back into more of the chorus. The song then quietens down to the closing outro which ties the song back up together.
So the plus points of this song is that the hook in the chorus is a definite earworm and it is very easy to latch onto and sing along to after just one listen. I also think in the verses have interesting phrasing being 7/8 without sounding awkward, especially when running into the chorus. Their voices blend well together and Tan in particular has a very distinctive tone. But for me the lack of connection between the two of them and the non-existent connection to the song lyrics is very grating. I will give them some slack purely down to the lack of audience and that singing like your life depended on it without support and encouragement would have been weird and in some cases might have made it even more nerve wracking. That all said I think both of them need to work on making this work as a duo rather than two people that happen to be singing the same song. Either they are 'together' or they are two individuals. Maybe having a small line of backing singers to focus on doing punching in the air movements on the 'yes' might be enough distraction from the walking so we don't see so much of them apart?
This will probably qualify as this is the most anthemic song in the bottom half of semi 2 and I could even see this as a rousing semi closer, which would almost guarantee them a final spot. It's a nice positive anthem, which one might need at such times and winning may even mean we return to the arena next year - but this time full!
Artist - Ben & Tan
Song - Yes
Composers - Linnea Deb, Jimmy Jansson, Emil Rosendal Lei
Lyricists - Linnea Deb, Jimmy Jansson, Emil Rosendal Lei
No comments:
Post a Comment