Italy ITALY 2017 - Francesco Gabbani - Occidentali's Karma

[JonnyWest]

Eurovision is a TV show, not a radio show people. Don't forget that

 

[popavapeur]

[MENTION=15456]Ezio[/MENTION] indeed, that's not the point of it. If it's charting the better but not necessary

 

[ChrisOL]

Songwise this is still in my opinion superior to every other song in this year's competition, at least if you listen to the studio version.

 

[aef]

I think two aspects hurt the most:

1. The gorilla! Last night everyone around me was like "what a pointless gimmick!" - And during the recap the again complained about the gorilla
2. The cut! Due to the lack of the second verse it sounded quite repetitive...

 

[LoveStormGuy]

I've loved this entry since February but last night's performance didn't impress me.

 

[ParadiseES]

This was shocking. Especially such a "lame" televoting result. I don't know why this happened, but this was the opinion from my friends who watched with me Eurovision and hadn't listened to the song before: they liked the song, but they didn't like Francesco so much. They kept repeating thins like "he's so full of himself" or "he's too Italian".
Don't know. Probably here is the reason why this didn't do as expected.

However, my opinion is that this song has a perfect studio, a perfect videoclip, but the live performance (both Sanremo and Eurovision) is weak.

 

[darkap]

I think some italians are dead and angry lol All I have heard from local fansites is "we must withdraw!" or "we must invade San Marino!" (well, I only approve the latter)

This will not happen of course, what I can say is thanks to Gabbani and all this hype Italy got really hooked and involved with Eurovision. The broadcast won for the first time ever the prime time after Italy's return in 2011, beating the 16th edition of Amici (basically, Italian Idol). 3.8 million will remember everything of this (5.3 million during Gabbani performance) and I bet only a small part of the audience were seriously disappointed with the result. Eurovision was for weeks on newspapers, websites... an event that was ignored just 5/6 years ago until 2015 when Il Volo created the right conditions for the contest to be recognized in Italy aswell. Yes, maybe next year, if we do not send another artist famous like Gabbani, the Tv ratings and interest may fall, but yesterday's show set a milestone that won't fade away.

We may take another 5, 10, 20 or 49 years to win again the Eurovision, but I sure hope that we will stay in this family now and forever.

Much of the high personnel of RAI was there yesterday hoping for a real win. For the first time they were truly interested to see the outcome and learn about the show production. They will try to change Sanremo looking at the Eurovision format and in the future probably they'll leave the Ariston Theatre looking for a brand new arena in the city. We did find out that some cities, like Bologna, decided to propose already a host bidding before the actual result, and that's great to know!

I'm sure Francesco is happy for the outcome. He was eventually ready for a disappointment. He took the Eurovision easy.
The 6th place is honorauble, and finally the winner is both from televote and juries. I loved Portugal! Sure, a top 3 would have been better, but simply someone didn't got involved with the song, some others were clearly lowering his chances. But I must say the whole concept was not 100% on point.
1) The choruses were not needed and did damage to the overall look
2) The cut was awful (but these are the ESC rules, I think we should introduce the same 3min rule in Sanremo so this won't happen again)
3) Backdrop too much dark that the gorilla was barely visible
4) O.k. was too much of an hit for months, that people got annoyed at some point
5) O.k. is not something Europe waits from Italy, it was rather strange for them I think
6) In the end, O.k. and Francesco were not alone in the category, with Moldova and Romania sharing the same boat. In fact, I think Moldova appearing first damaged a lot O.k.

What I did not like in fact was the juries petting for countries like Australia (2nd last in the televote) and Sweden (they did not deserve that result this year). Also, I'm hating the behaviour of Italy's jury, Portugal's jury and Bulgaria's jury. The 3 juries of each hot favorites Nations were clearly playing a strategy game. Italy and Portugal juries gave 12 points to Azerbaijan (what???) and while Italy gave 5 points to Portugal, they choose to not give anything to us. Regarding Bulgaria, they didn't vote for both and choose to give 12 points to Austria (WTF??). I should mention San Marino... yes... 2 points... I would be very happy to not see them ever again in Eurovision. Just plain terrible.

But the most horrible thing to watch was all the hate surrounding Italy and Francesco all these months. We and Francesco did not deserve it. And it may have played a small part. This is an example from BBC during the Final: click image

For the future I would like to see the abolishment of the Automatic Qualifiers (host excluded). It's time for the Big 5 to give it all and go for the Semifinals. They'll have another spotlight and maybe Francesco could have achieved a better position. Same for Alma.

Sorry for the lenghtness of the post!
I'm now looking forward to Lisbon 2018

 

[musicfan]

But the most horrible thing to watch was all the hate surrounding Italy and Francesco all these months.

Really? Can't say I felt it. Sounds like over-dramatising, and reading too much into things. It is quite a popular song and he's quite popular from what I can tell.

 

[A-lister]

I remember some got "upset" when I said that this wasn't a standout winner in the same category as "Euphoria" or "Fairytale", seems I was correct? Although I would have preferred this over Portugal but oh well... I'm not too surprised though, it sounds very standard pop to my ears, not bad but nothing interesting either.

 

[MyHeartIsYours]

When this performed last night I said to my friend "this ain't winning, in fact it ain't coming top 5" - turns out I was right. And tbh I'm glad, I love Italy and I'd love them to win/host, but this wasn't the one to do it with. I don't find it terribly appealing any which way I look at it. A quality Italian entry for me is the likes of Marco Mengoni, Il Volo, not this weird dancing and ape.

Portugal, Bulgaria, Moldova, Belgium and Sweden all deserved to finish above this, so did several others as a matter of fact.

 

[Jacketh]

When this performed last night I said to my friend "this ain't winning, in fact it ain't coming top 5" - turns out I was right. And tbh I'm glad, I love Italy and I'd love them to win/host, but this wasn't the one to do it with. I don't find it terribly appealing any which way I look at it. A quality Italian entry for me is the likes of Marco Mengoni, Il Volo, not this weird dancing and ape.

Portugal, Bulgaria, Moldova, Belgium and Sweden all deserved to finish above this, so did several others as a matter of fact.

I was watching the response of the betting odds (normally a very good indicator of what is going to happen) and it fell from joint favourite to 11-1 almost straight away after the performance.

I still think it had the potential to do a lot better, though. His vocals were just not as good as the national final, the colours were all wrong and as the guys on Wiwiblogs said - it was completely overdone and too try hard. They should have gone for a similar aesthetic to the video.

It would have been very hard to beat Salvador, but if the performance was actually put together correctly it would have been top three.

 

[ES2011]

I think the fandom, myself included might possibly slightly unnecessarily overhyped this entry, myself included.
The cut of the second verse, the lack of orchestra as support,the not so perfect vocals, all just little blows that tore away on Francesco's pedestal.

I can understand that it landed behind and even Memelords , but and ? Really? I mean seriously?
As much as it pains me to say this, it might have been the Italian language this time that killed it.
I mean most of us agreed that it's a great cheerful and uplifting song which is qualitatively good and very catchy, but it got it's super status by it's message which tied in the staging perfectly.
But as much as we like to delve into the meaning of Eurovision songs, 99% of the voters do not have the time, interest or patience to do the same.
I'm sure that every broadcaster gave one line to the message of the song, but if I look at my family and friends during Eurovision, nobody is listening or nobody cares.
What they than see is an Italian man singing Italian gibberish with a dancing ape that comes out of nowhere and has no place on the stage.
Combine that with the problems mentioned earlier and you have barely top 10 result left.

I think it's a shame, but I will always keep this entry in my heart and it will be remembered by the fandom for a very long time.
For Italy this is still a sign that their current set-up of San Remo is still perfect and if they keep at this, they win Eurovision in no time.

 

[0scar]

CONFESSION I still don't have a clue what Occidentali's Karma is about but it still ended up in my top three.
Didn't like the live version though

 

[musicfan]

I can understand that it landed behind and even Memelords , but and ? Really? I mean seriously?

You could do a bigger list for Azerbaijan this year. Every year there are songs you could say are underrated. None of the Italian entries have been severely underrated except for last year, so they've actually had a good time of it.

 

[popavapeur]

I wanted to see the performance again but actually all Italy + fans of the songs are having a meltdown in the comments. It's not good to see :-( Don't loose your faith italian friends and see the good side of it : another top 10 !

 

[midnightsun]

So where to begin...

First of all, my very first impression of the song when listening to it for the first time was like 'yeah, okay' and I could absolutely not get all the hype around this. I thought it was decent but I felt no winner vibes. I felt like this the whole pre-contest time. I was actually a bit put off by the whole hype and maybe a lot of people were too. This could have been affected the juries especially because would you dare to give your 12s to a country everyone is expecting to win? Juries would be accused of being biased if they did, so for half of the "Italian fail" juries should take credit for. Surprisingly or better not so surprisingly Italy didn't also very well in the telephone vote and I wrote it some days ago on this forum, that most people had to decide between Portugal and Italy. These people did probably not vote for anyone else so some other countries like Bulgaria or Moldova gathered a huge amount of votes from people who neither voted for Italy nor Portugal. It was clear, one of the two favourites had to fail! Tbh, until the final I was sure Italy would be the winner but then I saw Francesco's live performance for the very first time. Right after I was sure it wouldn't do that well. Why? Because I always thought, despite not understanding the whole lyrics completely, the song would have a deeper meaning. Though mocking a certain lifestyle the message would mean something, something serious. After the performance I was like "wtf, why is he so overacting, is he trying to be ridiculous'?
Probably that's what a lot of people thought. Well, what a pity, I did prefer this over Portugal, but that's Eurovision. And I am somehow glad the outstanding favourite was dethroned last minute, otherwise it really would have been boring.

 

[hijirio]

I think this is unfair. You do realize that Portugal broke the record for most points ever? And even if it was in the old voting system we would have broken that record, with over 400 points.

Did you check the dislikes in the Portuguese video? If you haven't, let me tell you: 20k
It's obviously a love-hate song.
The people who love it had it in their 1st place, but the people who hated it had it at their 42th (like me)
And for me, a song that thousands of people put in their 42th isn't worth winning.
This will remain the most forgettable winner of the decade.
Even below Azerbaijan.

 

[LoveHate]

How is this a favorite to win? It's not that I don't like it, but... It's not THAT good. Not even top-3 Italian entry since their return, so I would honestly be a little upset if this one does the best.

I did warm up to the song after this post in March, but I never understood why it was such a big favorite. Now I'm upset it did worse than Sweden. The other countries above Italy I can somewhat understand.

 

[oxy333]

I read this news too, about RAI wanting to change Sanremo.
I'd change only few thing about Sanremo, max 3 days, like it was time ago, and reduce the max time of every evening, cut the blabbering with guest-star, cut the useless comical-show, and leave more space to music. Stop.

"Sanremo giovani" could became the contest for the italian ESC contestant. But it need more space given than like it is now, so, split the two things and if needed could be used a different theatre. Here, and just here, could be put a 3 mitutes long stop for every song.

 

[lorens]

I did warm up to the song after this post in March, but I never understood why it was such a big favorite. Now I'm upset it did worse than Sweden. The other countries above Italy I can somewhat understand.

Hahah same here... what makes me super pissed is not the fact that Italy came 6th, but that Robin did better than Francesco. I will not get over that fact anytime soon. What the eff, juries?!