Si buscas la fiesta, la tendrás

I'll be honest: I didn't pay the closest attention to the whole process of Misión Eurovisión, Spain's televised competition to choose its Eurovision representative; without the ability to watch it online or anywhere besides post-contest YouTube clips, my involvement on a watching-all-the-performances level was mainly limited to the final...which is probably how I missed out on Gerard (full name Gerard Martí). From the little bits and pieces I've seen of his performances from ME, I don't think I would have been particularly enthusiastic about him during the contest. However, for many artists, it's the material that makes them, not necessarily their voice (even if it's a good voice), and it's only with his debut single that I'm starting to pay attention to him.

Work It (Everybody)--this song is of a certain sort that I both often fall for and am turned off by. Not only is any pop song going for that hard-hitting club feel probably always going to be compared to Darin's "Step Up" in my mind and come up lacking, it's a type of song that can easily sound cheap and that lends itself to lots of ridiculous "oh look, I'm so hip and edgy!" posing that makes me uncomfortable. There is a certain aura of cheapness around the song and the backing vocal "work it everybody"s sound maybe ten years old, but it's fun, danceable, and has crowd noises in it and, as I said, I ultimately almost always end up enjoying this type of song, and this one is no exception. I don't expect it to do well chartwise in Spain, but I do really like it. Despite the title, it's almost all in Spanish, which I'm very glad of; the rhythm in Spanish gives it a certain feel I like and I imagine the lyrics in English would be too silly and posing-esque as well as unable to capture the flow of these ones (plus, Gerard sounds like he's much more comfortable with Spanish).

I thought I read that the single was going to come out in September, but if it's floating around this early, maybe it's due out earlier; at any rate, I don't know anywhere where you can preorder it yet, but keep an eye on El Corte Ingles.

Credit (once again) to PubliSpain for the song; strangely enough, I was planning a post on him and thought I'd just have to use a low quality MySpace rip, but luckily someone found the better quality audio version.

Next up: a French singer.