Serdyuchka heads to Eurovision

Mar 16, 2007

So that’s it. There is no doubt (or hope) left anymore. Verka Serdyuchka is going to represent Ukraine at the 2007 Eurovision Song Contest, set to take place in Helsinki May 12. The finals of the Ukrainian Eurovision selection contest took place live on March 9, on the First National channel. The interactive voting showed Serdyuchka’s song “Dancing” (to my mind, one of the lamest songs she ever made) an absolute leader. This hardly came as a surprise to anybody, including her rivals: Yevheniya Vlasova, Olena Grebenyuk, girl duo Neangely, and boy band Aviator, among others. She was just way too popular to be beaten.

But even while I understand that of all the artists taking part in the contest, Serdyuchka was the only one with chances to win – it doesn’t make the whole thing feel any better. While the song contest isn’t considered a big deal by countries like France, Britain and Germany, whose musicians are popular worldwide without the help of Eurovision, for Eastern European countries, including Ukraine, it’s a good chance to present themselves to a wider European audience. Serdyuchka, a comical character created by artist Andriy Danylko, surely appeals to a major part of the Ukrainian public, with her primitive yet catchy tunes and lyrics. She is even more loved in Russia for representing a grotesque version of a Ukrainian. Europeans, on the other hand, will hardly get the joke. Most likely they’ll just see her as a transvestite, albeit an abnormal one – with her plump form and truly bizarre costumes. Well, they might still find her funny, or just ridiculous. Besides, the results of last year’s Eurovision showed that weird characters have a much better chance to win the contest than regular pop singers. As for Serdyuchka herself, in an interview to Blik newspaper, she simply said, “I’m so tired of this Eurovision talk! I’m not going there to get first place – I don’t give a damn about first place!” With such a will for victory, there’s no doubt Serdyuchka will be a worthy representative of her country at Eurovision.

Source:  kyivpost.com