I’ve been sitting on this post for a while, hoping that as more song came out, I’d get over my disappointment over this one. But it’s January, I’ve just replayed Matt Blxck’s BANANA and I am still not over it.
Let’s be clear: I have been in love with Matt Blxck ever since I heard the studio version of “Come Around” in January 2022. In case you need a reminder, here it is:
There was something about the mixture of the maniacal laughter and the tossed-off “It’s Matt Blxck” which instantly reeled me in. The lyrics were also pretty amazing – a mixture of sex. desire, alcohol, and one person utterly and completely confident in their skin dealing with someone who was very much not. Oh, and all of this was set to an incredibly danceable beat. It may not have gone to Eurovision, but it did manage to take up permanent residence in my brain. I have spent the past two years randomly belting out: “I don’t know if you know my name/it’s M-A-T-T-B-L-X-C-K” at the most inappropriate times.
So I was incredibly, incredibly hyped when I found outt Matt Blxck would be returning a third time* to MESC – and this time with a song called BANANA. It looked like it was going to be an innuendo-filled banger that, at its core, was a big ‘fuck you’ to homophobia and slut shaming.
Well.
It was that big *fuck you* for roughly 30 seconds, when Matt Blxck managed to seductively peel and eat a banana. But the rest of it? It was a song performed by Matt Blxck, but without any Matt Blxck – Matt Colxrless, perhaps.
And there’s one tiki tiki taki taki mela mela person to blame:
That’s right – it’s Banana cowriter and former Melodifestivalen entrant Sean Banan, who, about a decade ago, made a career out of pulling this type of schtick in unsuspecting cities across Sweden. A Sean Banan song had multiple elements – nonsense lyrics, references to bananas, and a general air of jovial time-killing, because he knew that it would be getting nowhere near the Eurovision stage.
And that’s the problem with Banana – it’s a Sean Banan song jammed into a Matt Blxck framework. But the problem is that Matt Blxck already has his own distinctive voice and worldview, and parachuting in a Swedish songwriting team – a common practice in Eurovision – simply won’t cut it here. Fans come to MESC wanting to hear Matt Blxck sing about making bad decisions with no regrets, not do a goofy nonsense song that’s very much safe for work.
It’s true that artists grow and change, and I was worried that Matt Blxck may have simply decided to grow up. Maybe he wanted to make a career shift from a man singing about his libido to a man being an unthreatening presence on children’s YouTube videos. But evidence would suggest that is not the case, based on Matt Blxck’s release of earlier this year:
I know this Matt Blxck is still in there. I also know that Matt Blxck is a favorite to win MESC this year. And as a Matt Blxck fan, I hope that doesn’t happen. Europe deserves to see Matt Blxck in his undistilled, unapologetic form, not in this “children’s TV presenter dabbles with bondage” vibe. Please, Matt Blxck, just do a lot of shots in the meantime, and come back with some real stories to fuel a banger for Valetta 2026.
*Yes, we know that Matt Blxck competed under a different name in MESC, but that was before he had evolved into his current, final form, before his brain had been properly pickled by all the gin and tonics.
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