Moldova Entry: SunStroke Project - Hey, Mamma!

May 28, 2017 Critic Jonni 0 Comments


Hey Mamma - Sunstroke Project |

Here's my favourite Eurovision 2017 song, the one I spent all my phone credit voting for; the one, I felt, should've won the Eurovision Song Contest 2017. If only the juries had voted more for this song. It will forever stay as one of my all-time favourite Eurovision songs, and I cannot wait to see what the future brings for SunStroke Project. They are a trio I need to see live! They came third overall with 374 points, 264 came from the televote and 110 came from the jury vote. I would've loved to have seen these guys win. The music video for the song is very relatable to the song itself and is absolutely perfect in every way. Watch SunStroke Project perform their song whilst frontman Sergei Yalovitsky plays nice in front of the mother of his girlfriend, just like the Eurovision 2017 song "Hey, Mamma!" suggests.

SunStroke Project are a three-piece group consisting of Sergei Yalovitsky, Anton Ragoza, and Sergey Stepanov. They have extensively attempted to represent Moldova at Eurovision a number of times, which has definitely made them a household name in Moldova. They firstly atempted in 2009 where they came third, then in 2010 they competed again with "Run Away" as a collaboration with Olia Tira, in O melodie pentru Europa, where they won and went on to represent Moldova in Oslo, Norway, where they came 22nd in the Grand Final. Their performance went viral as Sergey Stepanov's saxophone solo turned into a meme titled Epic Sax Guy or Saxroll. They next competed to represent Moldova in Eurovision 2012 with Olia Tira in show Selecția Națională, but didn't make it to the show. Next, they tried in 2015 with two songs in O melodie pentru Europa, both songs made the semi-final but they had to choose only one to compete with; they came third in a collaboration with Michael Ra. Then 2017 came along, which they won and subsequently came third at the Grand Final of Eurovision, Moldova's best placing since they debuted in 2005. The song has charted throughout Europe; it's extremely catchy and I can never get it out of my head. It was written by SunStroke Project and Alina Galetskaya.

The music video is both a performance piece and a narrative. It makes a change to see a polished perfect Eurovision Song Contest 2017 music video, it's rare to see any Eurovision music video going for it fully. This is certainly the best music video from this year, for sure.

The performance piece of this music video is very subtle, with Epic Sax Guy totally taking centre spotlight at all the right moments. It's fun and all three guys look totally sexy. Their dance moves are sultry and totally in-sync; whoever thought toe-tapping would be sexy? They nailed it so much, and these visuals were found on the backing LED display when they were on the Eurovision stage.

As for the narrative, where do we even begin, it is literally so so so good! We watch Sergei Yalovitsky step off the elevator and meet his girlfriend and her mother, who he hands some flowers too. They sit down at the small kitchen dining table and there are various occasions when the mother decides to draw his attention away from her daughter.

Then we step into the vocalist's daydream, without realising, where the daughter gets up from the table and starts to mix ingredients together whilst removing her clothes sexily, until the mother whacks him on the head with a rolling pin. Back to reality, they're still at the table, chatting. Other daydreams appear, including his girlfriend shoving him onto the bed and teasing him sexily. The final dream is them getting married, but as he lifts the veil, it's the mother standing at the altar with him - however this is a proper dream and he wakes up in the bed, topless, with a massive smile on his face as he sees his girlfriend by the window, also topless.

This is a well thought-out music video. It works completely and totally relates to the song in every way. The song is about telling the mother of a girl they're dating, not to worry about him and that he will look after her. The music video brings a comedic twist to this story of the song, and it so friken works! This is my winner of the Eurovision Song Contest 2017.
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