Hooverphonic represents Belgium at Eurovision 2021 with the song
The Wrong Place
.
He participates in the first semi-final broadcast this Tuesday live on France 4 from 9 p.m.
"We decided to participate in Eurovision because, over the past five years, songs have come back to the center of the competition,"
Alex Callier, bassist and co-founder of the group
, explains to
20 Minutes
.
“We want a good performance, the rest is not in our hands. You can't have control over that, so you try not to think about it too much, ”he adds when asked if he's worried that Hooverphonic won't qualify for Saturday's final.
Just because their song is called
The Wrong Place,
doesn't
mean Hooverphonic is an intruder at Eurovision. This Tuesday, he will defend the chances of Belgium in the first semi-final, broadcast live on France 4 from 9 p.m. The group, known worldwide for their hit
Mad About You
, was to participate in the contest last year with
Release Me
, but after the event was canceled, the Belgian delegation returned them for the 2021 edition. Singer Geike Arnaert will therefore perform
The Wrong Place
, by putting herself in the shoes of a woman who wakes up one morning alongside the stranger with whom she slept the day before.
A ride as elegant as it is sarcastic, which would have its place in the final.
Alex Callier, co-founder and bassist of Hooverphonic, answered questions from
20 Minutes
.
Your staging is very sober, rather elegant.
Did you want something intimate?
Yes, it was important to us. The reason we decided to participate in Eurovision was that we felt that, over the past five years, songs had come back to the center of the competition. There is room for artists like Salvador Sobral, who won in 2017. What matters to us is Geike's voice. She must be at the center of our universe and that's why on the stage, she is literally in the middle, surrounded by the musicians. It's sober, but the atmosphere is very Belgian. I think this creates a good contrast with other delegations. We are big fans of France. To be honest, we find Barbara Pravi's candidacy very successful, it's very different from everything else. She is a very good singer, her interpretation is very strong.She is our biggest competitor (laughs).
When you're a group known as Hooverphonic, isn't there a fear of competing in Eurovision?
Pressure to defend your image and hope that this does not work against you?
No, I do not think so.
We told the Belgian broadcaster [the VRT channel] that we would only participate if we could remain 100% Hooverphonic.
It was essential that all images and music remain in our universe.
The channel agreed to give us control.
I believe that if we had done something very Eurovision, very far from what we normally do, we might have been in danger.
There would have been the risk of disappointing our fans.
Now even though our song
The Wrong Place
had not competed, it would still have been the first single from our new album.
The times have changed.
When we were young, we had to choose a camp: you were alternative or commercial.
Young people today can go to a very underground concert one day and the next day they are in a club dancing to very mainstream electronic music.
We like this change because we are an eclectic group and we enjoy living in an eclectic world.
Are you worried about not qualifying for the final or are you saying to yourself "We make our music and come what may"?
If Geike sings perfectly and all is well, we'll be happy.
We want a good performance, the rest is not in our hands.
We can't have control over it, so we try not to think about it too much.
We have to be relaxed, have fun, if you're not having fun, you can't deliver a good performance.
Two years ago, we were in a restaurant with Duncan Laurence, two months after his victory at Eurovision, and he told us that the most important thing was to stay calm.
It's difficult because we have a change-over [the time allotted to take a seat on stage just after the departure of the previous candidate] of 40 seconds.
Duncan telling us - it was before the covid - to stay in our bubble, even if there is an avalanche around us, we have to stay focused.
We took that advice.
Our Eurovision dossier
Did you have any advice from Emilie Satt, with whom you worked, who lived the experience of Eurovision 2018 within the duo Madame Monsieur?
Yes, she said to me: “Have fun!
".
It is true that there are a lot of connections between Eurovision and Hooverphonic.
Emilie sang
Badaboum
with us.
Luca Chiaravalli, who co-wrote
Release Me
, our song from last year, wrote
Occidentali's Karma
for Italy [Eurovision 2016].
We also worked a lot with Dan Lacksman, who was in the Telex group, representing Belgium at Eurovision 1980. We worked in the studio with him.
And, a long time ago, we worked with the sound engineer whose wife was Sandra Kim [the Belgian singer who won Eurovision in 1986].
Your song, "The Wrong Place" was born out of a joke about Johnny Cash, right?
It was really a coincidence.
We were listening to the radio over lunch and a Johnny Cash track played.
Charlotte Forest, with whom I wrote the song, told me that she liked this artist.
I replied that I did too and, as a joke, I told him that it might be a challenge to put his name in the lyrics.
She thought we couldn't do it.
And then in the afternoon, all of a sudden, this "Don't you еver dare to wear my Johnny Cash tee-shirt" popped up.
That's the magic of writing songs, even after twenty-five years of career, there are unexpected things happening: it was perfect.
It's even the
hook
, as the song's shocking phrase said in English.
We were after the first confinement, we said to ourselves that we were going to write a song about everything that is suicidal at that time: touching a stranger, kissing him, giving him a hug, a one-night stand. with someone you don't know, it's crazy now.
So it's a song inspired by covid but approached completely differently from other songs on this theme.
You hesitated between this song and "Full Moon Duel" to compete.
Why did you finally choose “The Wrong Place”?
Because here there is a kind of
darkness
, a somewhat dark atmosphere, with melancholy but also humor. We thought it was 100% Hooverphonic year 2021. In rhythm and all that, it's very current, but in guitars and things a bit like Ennio Morricone and John Barry, it's very Hooverphonic.
Full Moon Duel
was cool too. There was also
Thinking About You
, which all started with. We told the VRT that we would agree to go to Eurovision if we had a song that we liked. Because to say yes while the song is yet to be written would put too much pressure.
The Wrong Place
was written his pressure. A mutual friend introduced us to Charlotte Forest and I saw each other in the studio for a kind of first impression, to see if we could work together. We didn't have in mind to write a hit or a single, but to have fun. In many cases, songs are born within this framework of artistic freedom. When you write something formatted for the radio, you are not free, you think too much. But you have to listen to your guts. Besides, when Raymond came by and listened to the song, he said: “this is for us, this is Hooverphonic”. At that moment, I thought to myself that Charlotte might want to take her for herself. And Raymond insisted: "Alex, you don't understand, it's up to us!" (Laughs). When Geike joined us in November, she listened to the demos and she directly said, "That,it's good ”after hearing
The Wrong Place
.
Your album "Hidden Stories", released at the beginning of May, was therefore born from a surge of freedom that you wanted to ward off what the pandemic implied?
Yeah, but there's also some pretty weird stuff like the opening track,
A Simple Glitch Of The Heart.
, which begins with the sentences “It's in the air that we breathe. Are we infected? "(" It's in the air that we breathe. Are we contaminated? ") And that we wrote two years ago, when there was no covid. Every once in a while you write stuff and then it's almost premonitory. But it's true that most of the songs were written last year. It was still a pretty weird year. There were some very difficult things, the fact of not being able to play live, of being confined… At the same time, we were also very lucky, I think. Being able to participate in Eurovision, to make an album, that kept us busy. It is important for the mind. It gave us good prospects, a purpose. The first months of confinement, it was very sad for the people who were sick,but it still gave us time to think things over I think. We were really in a bubble, we were able to think about writing the songs. Unlike other musicians I've spoken to, I didn't have a blackout for inspiration. Music is my therapy.
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