Song of 2011
Niña & Nina - Caroban
I’m going to open my brief review here by quoting direct from Casey at Crumbler - “I heard songs this year more formally inventive than this one, more explicit, more indie. But when I think of 2011…”
…2011, for me, is owned by this slice of Bacharach-esque pop which should have won Eurovision this year. I never really ‘got’ Eurovision before, because the songs were always so tacky and overwrought, and even the kitsch factor I didn’t find worth the effort. But I watched all of it this year and thank goodness I did. Whoever wrote this understands that a poppy love song doesn’t have to be tacky, doesn’t have to be sexy, it can just be a sing-a-long explosion of exuberance that is over the top just enough but not too much. And yes, we do sing along, specifically to the Serbian version. The only word we actually sing is “Caroban”, the rest we just scat and randomly syllabalise our way through. There is an English version, but that’s not the one we fell in love with.
