I really dont understand how some people can say things like the song giving them fake vibes. He has written the song by himself from a sad experience he had been going through. It's as honest as you can get. The emotion he puts in this song is huge, the story feels real to me. All the reactions under his video shows that many people experience the same. Maybe some of you just don't feel it, which is okay, but i'm just curious as to why some of you think its not a good entry or giving you fake vibes. Maybe some people cant relate to a loss of someone or anything else precious or some of you just prefer listening to bops instead, i don't know. I agree that it's not the most original song ever. Songs like Arcade can be found in many charts across Europe, but the same can be said about other winners of the past. In this years competition it stands out, in any other year, who knows. Fact is this song captures a lot of positive attention and you need that in order to go far in ESC. Music is feeling as King Salvador said and i guess that explains it all. Some of us are feeling it, some people don't. Still i'm happy to see that most people are feeling it. And if Duncan nails the staging, i don't see any reason why it won't win.
Well, as you say, some of us are feeling it, some aren't. I don't think I can point out a single aspect and say "see, it is fake because of THIS", but I still have that feeling. The closest explanation I got is how extremely polished it feels. I don't mind me a "sob story", I have had my losses too (everyone has at some point of their lives), I
can relate. Yet if I take for example AWS last year, the central feeling comes out fairly raw. They have had plenty of fireworks, but those did complement the expression of anger rather well. Michael Schulte's much softer song was about the same topic, but I still understood his song as a thank you speech to his own father and that felt pretty straightforward and honest.
(As I understand it) Arcade combines
- the feelings of losing a friend who found the love of her life but had to die instead
- together with addiction of computer games
- and some oh ohs
- all presented by a naked super polished guy who might or might not be the love of the aforementioned girl's life (I don't want to have double standards, because I would certainly appreciate the nudity as a selling point were the singer a girl, yet in that case I just wouldn't expect a super deep and meaningful song. So yeah, the combination bothers me).
That's just too much of a mashup for my taste, Arcade tries to be too many things in the same time. In AWS' and Schulte's cases, the message I get is "oh I had this big pain and I used the songwriting process and singing itself to somehow help me get better". For Duncan, it is more of a "oh, I need to write a new song, could I get some points for the pain topic?" (Which I think justified by wiwibloggs: "he said of the songwriting process. “I searched for touching stories that move people"
https://wiwibloggs.com/2019/03/18/arcade-lyrics-duncan-laurence/). And that is quite close to
calculated. Of course it could have actually been the same case for ASW and Schulte, but it is not the feeling I get.
I respect that many people do feel the song and react to it positively. I only try to give you some explanation for my feelings being on the opposite side. Of course who knows, they might still change
