Evaluating Romania's 2018 Performance
Romania’s 2018 Performance “Goodbye” by The Humans
This 2018 performance “Goodbye” was sung by The Humans, which is a band made up of six members. Christina Caramarcu is the lead vocalist. The other members names are Adi Tetrade, Alin Neagoe, Alex Matei, Alex Cismaru, and Corina Matei. Christina splits her time between Rome and Bucharest. She quit her job in telecommunications, started taking singing lessons, and then joined Jukebox where she met her current band. Alex Matei who is the piano player, graduated from George Enescu Music Academy (Eurovision). George Enescu Music Academy is a University of Arts in Iasi, Romania. Adi Tetrade, the drummer, was introduced to a drum-set at the age of three by his grandfather. He’s been in multiple bands and participated in several TV shows such as, Dancing with the Stars, The Voice Romania, and Strictly Come Dancing. He joined Jukebox in 2006 where he met his future band members (Eurovision). The guitar player, Alex Cismaru is also a George Enescu Music academy alumnus as well. While at the university he studied guitar. Alex has been part of many bands and has experience in multiple genres, including pop, folk and blues (Eurovision). Alin Neagoe, who is the bass player, co-founded the band Supermarket. He also joined Jukebox in 2006. (Eurovision). Corina Matei, who plays the cello, was born in Bulgaria. She joined the Varna Opera Child Choir at the age of seven. (Eurovision). The song Goodbye was composed and produced by Alin Neagoe and Alexandru Matei, the lyrics were written by Cristina Caramarcu and the video was directed by Anthony Icuagu (Eurovision).
The song “Goodbye” is classified as soft rock. Soft rock is a subgenre of music. It contains a guitar (either acoustic or electric), keyboards, bass guitar and drums. Soft rock is not aggressive and has somewhat of a pop feel to it, but more guitar is added. Some popular examples in America of soft rock artists would be, Fleetwood Mac, Lionel Richie, John Denver, and Billy Joel (MasterClass 2021)
The 2018 Eurovision song contest was held in Lisbon, Portugal. The song “Goodbye” was performed in English and took 11th in the semifinal. Romania currently has no Eurovision victories. If you read my last blog post on Romania, I talked a little bit about their national identity, which consists of a strong Orthodox religion and complex history that revolves around power changes, which prevents a strong persistent National Identity. In the performance the lead singer, Christina Caramarcu is wearing a cross necklace. This could relate back to national identity but wearing a cross is very common in multiple cultures and countries. In the next paragraphs you will see why any country could perform this song and it would have no trace back to any national identity. This song talks about a very common problem in the world these days and it has nothing to do with one specific country.
The lyrics of this song seems to be just another love song at first. The chorus consists of, “Why don’t you see the beauty that surrounds you everywhere
Why can’t you feel the joy in all the small things people share
And all the happiness, that by the way is all for free
Open your heart, receive the love and stay with me”
From the just looking at the chorus, this song really could be about anything. Once I started to dig into the lyrics, I noticed that this song seems to be about mental health. In the chorus you see “why can’t you feel the joy in all the small things people share”, which is a common symptom of depression. People with depression have a very hard time finding joy in things that many others can find joy in. People with depression often lose joy in things they used to love. The second verse says this,
“I should’ve stayed
But I already left a thousand times
I’ve won my fights
Nobody knew nothin’ about
All alone
Trapped in a void
Can’t see the light
Goodbye”
I believe that the perspective in this verse changes and that it is a different person talking than who was talking in the chorus. The chorus consist of referring to the person as “you” which means they are talking to someone else other than themselves. In the second verse it refers to the person as “I” which means they are talking about themselves. You can really see how this song can relate to mental health in this verse. “I should have stayed but I already left a thousand times”. So many people with mental health try to stay present in the moment but have such a hard time and they check out. When the song says, “I won my fights nobody knew nothin’ about, All alone”, I believe this refers to the mental fights that a lot of people have to fight that nobody knows about. “Trapped in a void, can’t see the light”, a lot of people who fight these battles alone believe that there is no way out and that they are forever alone, they can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel. The bridge of this song says,
“Please
Don’t be afraid
I hear your cry
Don’t cry”
I think this is the same person who was talking in the chorus. They are reassuring the person in verse two than it is going to be ok, don’t be afraid and that they are not alone and that they hear them, and they see them.
The staging for this song could be confusing at first. It involves several mannequins and there are masks on the mannequins. At first, I didn’t understand this but then it started to make sense to me. I believe that the mannequins represent the people who struggle with mental health. They show the shape of a human, but they aren’t present in human form. People with mental health issues may experience this feeling of being somewhere but not being present. There were also white masks on the mannequins, I think this refers to the category that society tends to place mental health in. Often, society look at all mental health issues the same and places them together, when really, they are all different. We also tend to put the people who experience these issues into the same category when really, they. Have so much more to show for and their mental health should not define who they are.
The song “Goodbye” was inspired by the band members’ personal life experiences. This song is supposed to help those in need who feel they need to fight their demons alone. This society is becoming more dehumanized and self- centered, turning a blind eye to the ones around us, while we should be reaching out to one another (Honciuc, 2018). This is very true, and I personally see it. People are turning away from the idea of reaching out to one another and just thinking that they will get better all by themselves. We as humans, were made to love each other, not to live life alone and face our problems alone.
“Goodbye” represents cosmopolitanism. This song does not refer to one specific race, gender, nationality, or sexual orientation. Cosmopolitanism is the idea that all of humanity could belong to a single community. Cosmopolitanism is a moral perspective that emphasizes the inherent worthiness of human beings regardless of their location (Warf 2020). As I said earlier, any country could sing this song as it would make sense. If the name of the country wasn’t put up on the screen you wouldn’t even know that Romania sang this song. In this song I believe they are trying to include everyone and not cater to one specific group, which supports the idea of cosmopolitanism.
To conclude, I would just to summarize what I went over. This was just my interpretation of the song, there may be different ones out there. I described how I don’t believe this song and performance ties into Romania’s national identity. Although, she was wearing a cross necklace I feel that is a common thing to wear for other’s who are not from Romania as well. The song “Goodbye” had nothing to do with religion and it was sung in English. Any other country could have performed thing song and it would still have made sense. The song seemed to be about mental health. There were several lines referring to mental health. The mannequins also seemed to portray those who don’t feel that they can be present, and the masks seemed to model the idea of how we tend to clump mental health into one category. Even though this song took 11th in the semifinal, I think it carries a great message. People need to know that they are not alone and people are here to help and want to help.
Word Count: 1,478
References
The Humans. Eurovision song contest. Retrieved February 27th, 2020 fromhttps://eurovision.tv
Honciuc, Bogdan. (2018). “Goodbye” lyrics-The Humans. Romania Eurovision 2018. Wiwiblogg. https://wiwibloggs.com/2018/03/04/goodbye-lyrics-the-humans-romania-eurovision-2018/218849/
MasterClass. (2021). Soft rock music guide. 5 characteristics of soft rock. https://www.masterclass.com/articles/what-is-soft-rock
Warf, Barney. (2020). Cosmopolitanism. Science Direct. Retrieved February 27th, 2023https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/social-sciences/cosmopolitanism
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