Cyprus – Theo Evan – Shh

Cyprus, you mad geniuses, you’ve done it again.

Starting in 2018, when Eleni Foureira nearly won Eurovision by claiming “You got me pelican fly-fly-flying”, Cyprus has been known for mixing impeccable dance beats with completely unhinged lyrical descriptions. Who could forget Tamta’s Replay, with its gleefully misheard lyric of “shitting my body tonight?” Or Elena Tsagrinou mentioning tacos and tamales and then singing “all this spicy melts my icy” in her ode to satanic relationships in El Diablo? Even last year, poor Disney Channel host Silia Kapsis tried unsuccessfully to convince the entire continent of Europe that an upturned L displayed upon the head means Loser instead of Liar.

And in 2025? Well, Cyprus is sending a complete doozy of an incomprehensible song by Theo Evan. It’s called Shh and…well, take a watch:

There are so many things to adore about this song, which only has four songwriters listed. I like to imagine that they were all trapped in different rooms and given the previous line of the song to add onto it, like a writing improv exercise, and then when they were let out, they all shrugged and said “yeah, that will do.”

Here are the many reasons to love Theo Evan’s Shh:

• It starts with Theo Evan looking directly at the camera and stating that he has “golden locks” and “eyes so captivating” and is famous for his beauty. I’ll defer to others on the beauty question, but Theo is clearly a brunette. He’s so brunette he could be representing Armenia in 2023.
• Theo states this while playing a board game with a masked figure, like the director is trying to make us recall Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal and the famous chess match with Death. Except here, everything is dumbed down, like chess would be too hard for a man who doesn’t know his hair colour, so Theo is playing a game that involves only four spaces and large geometric shapes.
• Theo then enters a hallway, because this is a video from Cyprus and sponcon is necessary, before being told to “follow the bloodstream.” That seems a little gory and/or eugenicist, no? I would probably stop following the clues at this point, but I am not Theo Evan, a man who thinks he is blond and will spend the rest of the video actively telling people not to speak.
• In fact, Theo asks us to keep his name a secret, which seems like a bad idea for a Eurovision act hoping to, you know, win Eurovision. Vote for Cyprus! The song by that guy! You know – the one who asked us not to say his name!
• I should note that Theo Evan deserves so much credit for not only being a good singer, but being able to imbue a fake battle over a boardgame with a faceless man with any semblance of credibility. Nobody has any idea what is going on in this video, but that is not going to stop Theo Evan from acting very hard, like he is in a Yorgos Lanthimos drama.
• Indeed, Theo Evan is a master at singing with his arms. In the last minute of the video, he is called upon to let out a few big notes, but manages to do so only by leaning and dramatically flinging out an arm from his body, like he is in a kung fu movie and throwing forth a bit of his life essence. It is needlessly dramatic and I love it so much.

I leave the video for Shh no wiser than when I went in to it. I am a woman who enjoys overanalysing symbolism, and this has absolutely stymied me. It is a song that wants to be deep, but in reality, is just a farce of Theo Evan and his dopplegangers running in and out of hotel room doors into the desert. If parts of this video were run to the Yakety Sax theme, as opposed to Shh, it would make equal amounts of sense.

I realise that all of this may sound like I hate this song. Reader, that would be wrong. I love it. I love it so much. I love having a himbo running around the desert pretending like their song means more than it does. I love a song that I will sing along with despite the fact that none of the words make sense next to each other. I love a Eurovision song that exists for the sole purpose of making people dance for three minutes. It doesn’t try to do anything else, especially if that something else is “be coherent.”

And what has made me love this song even more is the fact that Theo Evan’s rumored staging will involve him flying through the air for the full three minutes of the performance. Why? Are there any references to flying or wings or being airborne in his song? Nope! Someone just thought it would look good. And you have to admire a Eurovision team that is pure id.