Typically NMC shies away from mainstream pop bangers as we are not best suited to reviewing them but I was so taken by Erika Vikman’s performance at Eurovision last year with her ‘Ich Komme’, in which she dynamically owned the stage and in the campest way, that I couldn’t overlook the follow up, ‘FATHER (I will never confess)’ in which she does her darndest to channel Madonna in her ‘Like a Virgin’ and ‘Like a prayer’ personas.
And she sings in English too, apparently for the first time. I couldn’t get my head around the Finnish lyrics to the Eurovision entry although I believe they were a little rude.
It isn’t clear to me if the ‘Father’ she declines to confess to here is her natural one (in the way of Madge’s ‘Papa don’t preach)’ or the religious figure that might have intervened in ‘Like a Prayer’.
The song could be interpreted in several ways. On one hand it could be regarded as an extension of ‘Papa don’t preach’ in which the protagonist gains victory over the domineering father and turns the tables on him (note the last line “Who’s your Daddy now?”.
Another might even be that the reason she’s “dancing with the Devil” now is that she was abused (by either her father or a holy one, possibly both) and has been drawn into a life of debauchery she cannot now escape from. But she will never confess in order to save him/them from public opprobrium.
The tune is so catchy and jaunty that such an interpretation doesn’t really fit but the most serious songs have been framed within a danceable tune.
Or it might be something else entirely.
What matters is that it is immediate and in your face, just like ‘Ich Komme’, and is what we’ve come to expect from the one-time Finnish Tango singer, a serious art form.
She’s filling a gap that has existed since Madonna and Cyndi Lauper reached pensionable age and Sinéad O’Connor left us, epitomised by fast delivered, melodic, dramatic pop songs with a hint of the raw, the vulnerable and the unmentionable about them, both to titillate and to keep the fans guessing.
And the lyricism is smart, too:
“It’s so good, hell yeah
Who’s to blame, blame, blame?
I am the ultimate sinner
And the devil is once again
Having me for a dinner
I’ve always been like this, since I was just a kid
Oh, that’s me
It’s all me”.
“…Hell-elujah, hell-hell-elujah”.
While she kills the song with one simple, devastating key change.
We are witnessing the creation of the next international female pop icon, with the theatricity of early Genesis thrown in for good measure. I knew that immediately I saw her taking off on that moon shot mic–cum-phallic symbol last May, blazing its trail, and tethered to it by a ridiculously thin wire at least 10 metres in the air as if she was invincible.
And doesn’t she just look the part here? Every man’s dream/nightmare.
Should it be Finland’s Eurovision entry this year? Is the Pope Catholic?
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