The music video of the Russian rave group Little Big, which was supposed to represent the country at the Eurovision Song Contest 2020, fell into the Trend tab of the YouTube platform. The Hypnodancer video, released May 8, scored the first million views in three hours, and on May 10, that number reached 12 million.

The description notes that the video was shot in St. Petersburg even before the coronavirus pandemic affected Russia.

According to the plot of the clip, Little Big members rob visitors of underground casinos using hypnotic dances. A vivid episodic role went to showman, participant in the Evening Urgant program, Alexander Gudkov.

The video is made in the corporate style of the team with an emphasis on the choreographic component. A parody element with many references is also noticeable: for example, a character appears in the video that looks similar to Walter White from the popular 2008-2013 series Breaking Bad.

The theme of the failed Eurovision is not forgotten - instead of standard cards, casino visitors use decks to play Uno. This is a reminder of the hit of the same name Little Big, with which the team was going to represent Russia at the competition this year.

On the set of the Hypnodancer video, the band again joined The Hatters lead singer Yuri Muzychenko and Leningrad lead singer Florida Chanturia. The musicians, as well as the dancer Dmitry Krasilov, who became famous thanks to the video for the song Uno, were to go to Rotterdam with Little Big in May.

On March 18, the organizers of the event announced the cancellation of Eurovision in connection with the coronavirus pandemic. Since this has not happened before in the history of the competition, the situation raised a number of questions - first of all, about whether the announced musicians will be able to represent their countries next year and perform previously published compositions.

Later, the European Broadcasting Union explained that the right to choose the participants for the next year rests with the broadcaster of each country (the First Channel was to broadcast the 2020 contest in Russia).

As for specific compositions, the standard rule was applied to them: competitive songs should not be available on commercial platforms until September 1, 2020. Thus, the use of already published songs is excluded.

A number of countries participating in Eurovision (including Georgia, Israel, the Netherlands, Spain, Bulgaria and some others) have already announced a decision to send the same representatives to the competition next year that were announced in 2020. At the same time, other artists, winners of future festivals and national selections will perform from Sweden, Norway, Lithuania, Estonia, Denmark and Finland.

As for the participation of Little Big, there is currently no certainty. In an interview with Dutch beauty blogger NikkieTutorials (Nikki de Jager), published on the official Eurovision channel, Ilya Prusikin and Sofya Tayurskaya noted that the decision has not yet been made.

“If they call us, if they give us another chance to participate, it will be good. If not, then we will not be offended in any way, because this competition is not done to win and not to prove something to ourselves, but to hold a tough competition together. There are a lot of worthy guys in Russia, ”said Prusikin.

The musicians also said that of the performances of rivals that failed, they liked the numbers of the representatives of Iceland and Lithuania most of all.

Clips of the Little Big group regularly gain tens of millions of views on YouTube. Previous team work - Uno, published on the official channel of the Eurovision Song Contest, became the most popular video page in March 2020.

The number of views of the clip was 90 million. Video materials of participants from other countries showed much more modest results. So, among the most successful was the Lithuanian pop group The Roop, whose performance in the final of the national selection attracted the attention of 6.8 million users.

Among the Little Big videos, Skibidi and Faradenza won fame with 406 million and 229 million views, respectively. The penultimate video of the team at the moment - a clip for the song Go Bananas - also showed a good result with 104 million views.

https://eurovision.tv/official-ebu-statement-and-faq-eurovision-song-contest-2020-cancellation

https://eurovisionworld.com/eurovision/2021/event