Quite a few of the participants of 2011 have made really nice video clips for their songs. These days, when most tv companies upload the previews on their web and some present them on primetime television, a good preview can mean a lot of good to you.
But a friend asked me the other day if there isn't a risk that the strategy backfires. If you make a clip that is so great and so much fun and so fantastic so that the live performance can not live up to it?
Of course there is a risk like that. If your clip is a lot better than your actual song, then you are walking on thin ice. If you sing a lot better in the studio version compared to what you can pull off live, then you have a problem.
However, it is pretty scarce that songs impress loads of people in the previews only to crumble into dust once they enter the stage. Here are a few exceptions, though.
Like for instance Germany 2003 , which was colourful, bouncy and fun in the preview but which paled into a very average schlager entry on stage in Riga.
Sixteen - To Takie Proste (Poland 1998)
Poland 1998 managed to come across as both slick and catchy, modern and folksy in its clip and was highly tipped online to be a top contender for victory. While the live version wasn't bad, it didn't contain quite the same sparkle and this entry crashed and burned at the end of the results. Underservedly so.
La Década - La chica que yo quiero (Spain 1988)
This was a clip of a kind rarely seen in the previews at the time - a "real" clip, made to promote the song commercially, not to make your local tourist board happy. The Dublin performance was cheerful enough, but not enough to convince the conservative juries that a modern simple pop song was the one to vote for.
No comments:
Post a Comment