Let’s get one thing clear at the start: Marcus and Martinus are 22 years old. Old enough to legally drink the United States. Old enough to be older than the woman in the age gap discourse essay when she got married. Old enough to be older than the youngest contestant by half a decade. But yes, still young enough to be twinks.
I say this because, if you were like me during Melfest, you might have been wondering why these two high school students were singing about a woman who was unforgettable. Because at that age, no one is unforgettable. After the first year of university, everyone is on to pastures new.
So finding out that the twins were 22 made me feel a little bit better. I can now enjoy the song knowing that they’re not singing from the perspective of first love, doomed to be crushed in an agonizing in-person conversation at a local dive bar the Wednesday evening before Thanksgiving. Rather, they are singing from the perspective of someone a few years older who has gotten extremely drunk at said dive bar and are describing the woman they’ve met there to all their friends. She will, of course, be forgotten in a month’s time – but this song? This song is A KEEPER.
Throughout this year’s Melfest, I complained often and loudly about the Swedish formula’s diminishing returns. Assembling a team of crack songwriters to pull together a product has more often resulted in increasingly generic songs performed by musicians with their rough edges sanded off. In the worst cases, there’s no emotional connection to the performance, so songs sound like they’re being performed on a talent showcase like X-Factor, rather than a selection for a song competition like Eurovision. In an era when authenticity and originality are prized in music, Melfest needs to retool.
That being said, however, when Melfest hits, it really HITS. And Markus and Martinus HIT. This is a throwback to the Christer Bjorkman days, when Sweden knew how to create incredibly compelling three-minute packages of song and staging. The moment Markus and Martinus start fake surfing down their LED corridor, I am hooked – and so is the audience, who we can hear in the background clapping along. The whole setup is irresistible, like the movie TRON has been transformed into Stockholm’s hottest dance club. And then just when the song starts to become a little repetitive, the producers add a breakdown that sounds like a modem connecting – perfect to trigger the nostalgia circuits in all the elder millennials out there.
Do I think Marcus and Martinus are going to win? No. Do I think they are going to show all of us an incredible time in Malmo? 100 percent. I plan to shred my throat screaming along with the chorus in this song, as well as the weird modem effects.
Most of all, though, I hope that Marcus and Martinus are having fun with Eurovision. The two of them have been child stars for over a decade. That’s a long time to be in the public eye, and outside of competition shows like the Masked Singer, they’re regularly posting content to YouTube and TikTok. It’s not easy to grow up in the spotlight, and even harder to keep to the grind of putting videos out there. I just hope that the two of them – even though they are adults – aren’t being pressured into doing anything that they don’t want to be doing, and won’t face any backlash from their Eurovision experience.
dudepoints.fun 