Lane interviews one Eurovision attendee, a member of the Eurovision Club of Norway. It all combines to create one of the moods we most associate with pop music: blissed-out, open-mouthed, misty-eyed obliviousness. The next year’s contenders, spurred by such bravado, responded with “Magic, Oh Magic” (Italy) and “Piano Piano” (Switzerland).Īt Eurovision, the nonsensicalness of the lyrics is matched only by the surreality of the staging and costumes. Hence such gems as Austria’s “Boom Boom Boomerang,” from 1977 (not to be confused with Denmark’s “Boom Boom,” of the following year), Portugal’s “Bem-bom,” from 1982, and Sweden’s “Diggi-loo Diggi-ley,” which won in 1984. God Knows Why,”cited “Eurovision English” as one of its chief pleasures: it’s “an exquisite tongue, spoken nowhere else, which raises the poetry of heartfelt but absolute nonsense to a level of which Lewis Carroll could only have dreamed.” For many years, Lane explains, Eurovision rules prohibited singers from using a language other than the one of the country they represented, and so “cunning lyricists” responded by “smuggling random expostulations into their titles and choruses.” This, of course, only made the songs more fun: Anthony Lane, in his 2010 review of the Eurovision Song Contest, “Only Mr. The joy of incomprehension is familiar to anyone who loves pop music from elsewhere. It’s better not to know what, exactly, the horse dance might mean. It’s true enough that you can surmise that Gangnam is something like the Beverly Hills of Seoul it’s also true that you can consult to learn that, among other things, PSY is boasting about being “a guy who one-shots his coffee before it even cools down.” (I’ve done that, and don’t recommend it.) On the whole, though, ignorance is bliss. On the other, when you sing along, “Hey, sexy lady” notwithstanding, you don’t really know what you’re singing about. On the one hand, it’s obvious that “Gangnam Style” is fantastic. That’s fine-part of what makes “Gangnam Style” so fun is how, like international pop music generally, it combines absolute immediacy with near-total incomprehensibility. The song’s global popularity is such that the vast majority of people who enjoy it don’t speak Korean, and have no idea what it’s about.