“I'm very honored to be part of this wonderful World Cup in Qatar.
We get to celebrate football and music together and welcome each other and celebrate being together and doing the things we love!”
The Swedish-Moroccan music producer RedOne seems so excited about this year's Men's World Cup that one wonders how things are actually going.
This despite the fact that
Qatar is a country that in many ways lacks respect for human rights and is also suspected of having bought the championship via bribes.
Thanks to Qatar, nowadays sportswashing, i.e. using sporting events to make something appear nicer than it is, is an expression every grandmother knows.
What RedOne is guilty of, or at least happily participating in, could be called musicwashing.
This year, Fifa has released four official World Cup songs instead of one, and three of these have been produced by RedOne, who is also dubbed Executive Director of Entertainment.
The song "Hayya Hayya (Better together)" is a genre mix of artists from different parts of the world to create a sense of global community.
A community that Qatar's migrant workers may find difficult to feel as there are reports that thousands of them have had to take their own lives since the country won the World Cup.
The song "Arhbo"
means "welcome" in Arabic, but has been criticized by LGBTQ fans who do not feel welcome at all in Qatar, where homosexuality is illegal.
"Light the sky" is sung by four of the Arab world's biggest female artists and the music video features the female referees who for the first time will be allowed to judge in a football World Cup for men.
Good of course, but what good does it do Qatari women who have to ask a man for permission to travel or get married or whose women's national team "disappeared"?
RedOne doesn't seem to
want to be part of the championship's ugly backsides at all and has not returned when SVT sought him out.
In fact, he is distinctly alone in his love-bombing of this year's disgraced championship.
Even the sports world, which tends to take a hard ball on the head rather than admit that sports can have something to do with politics, has taken a stand this year.
Sweden's national team captain Janne Andersson is not going to Qatar.
"A mark," he says.
National team stars Magdalena Eriksson and Emil Forsberg are openly critical, and national teams from, among others, Denmark, the USA, the Netherlands, Germany, Australia and Norway carry out various actions with political messages.
You never thought that
- that you would have to turn to football instead of music for a little backbone, social pathos or, quite simply: the ability to distinguish between right and wrong.