Last night the Wiwi Jury—our in-house panel of musical unprofessionals—met with NATO and agreed to help defend the Latvian border in case Russia ramps up its expansion efforts. Then we gathered in the kitchen to review Aarzemnieki’s Eurovision 2014 song “Cake to Bake”. Did it leave us with a major sweet tooth? Or was the experience more akin to being diabetic in a candy shop? Read on to find out…

Wiwi: During the first semi-final of Eurovision this year, there’s a real risk fans might drown in the sea of ballads. So when Latvia’s cake floats by I suggest all y’all hold on for dear life and take a big ‘ole bite. “Cake to Bake” is just so sweet. It’s breezy and light yet still conveys an uplifting message about working together and asking for help. By the time all the backing vocalists are letting rip in the final chorus, I could almost shed a tear. Even if lead singer Jöran is occasionally shaky in the opening bars, this remains my dark horse for the first semi.

Score: 8/10

Angus:  If ‘Cake To Bake’ is a parody of a finished cake Aarzemnieki once made, then his mother clearly missed a few lessons. If you want a good cake you need good ingredients, good butter and cream to go in the centre and good icing to go on top. For a song you need a good singer, good song and lastly good lyrics to spread over three minutes. Latvia lacks all three. The song is also relentlessly and ruthlessly annoying. Nil Points.

Score: 0/10

Aarzemnieki Latvia Eurovision 2

Anthony: Someone has clearly forgotten to tell Latvia this isn’t The Great Eurovision Bake Off. So much for their “Made in Latvia” motto this year, their quality home-grown talent all wasted for this novelty entry. Haven’t Latvia learnt their lesson last year? No wonder they’ve struggled to qualify lately. It’s all very well having a cute and cheerful, but extremely cringeworthy song to jig along to, but this is more like a Baltic lamb to the post-Soviet slaughter. Expect a soggy bottom moment this year. Even Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood would find this sickly sweet entry hard to swallow.

Score: 1/10

Billy: Is that guy always happy? If so, is it because of the song or is his best friend named LSD? I have to admit that the music and rhythm of the song are quite good. But the lyrics are too hilarious to be taken seriously. I cannot stop laughing, which will probably prevent a lot of viewers from voting. In any case, bring some cakes on stage. You might as well complete the sugar overload…

Score: 1.5/10

Aarzemnieki Latvia Eurovision 7Bogdan: Seriously, optimists can be such downers. Are these obnoxious people high on sugar or what? I’m getting fat just watching all this sweet nonsense. Is this a joke? Did Latvia think it’s cute to send a joke to Eurovision instead of an actual song? “Cake To Bake” proves the theory that you should never send a supposedly humorous entry to Eurovision. A joke that may bring the LOL’s in your country will most certainly bomb in others. Try to bake a song next time, Latvia, and I promise you I’ll eat it up.

Score: 2/10

Deban: Aarzemnieki drummed up a simple idea, but hatched it beautifully. This is a good example of melodic simplicity riding on a moral tale. The band’s vocal harmonies work well, the guitar chords are simple and clean, and the group exudes cohesion. Although ‘Cake To Bake’ could easily be mistaken for a comedy entry, make no mistake: it’s actually a cleverly disguised parable. The Anglophone parts of Europe will get the gist of this, and I’m secretly hoping that the rest of Europe does too.

Score: 7/10

Katie: How cute. This should be a song on children’s TV! What I love about the music video is that the singer sits in a field with a guitar, looking like an Emmelie de Forest style hippy, then – all of a sudden – he starts singing about cake. Everyone is so smiley too! They just look happy to be there. As you listen to the chorus, you can’t help but smile. It’s one of those songs, as strange as the lyrics may be, that never fails to lift your mood. What does confuse me, however, is that everyone gets overexcited about baking a cake even though there are no cakes or ovens. Also, how do they manage to use the words cake, unicorn and gravity within 10 seconds of each other? I’m not denying that the lyrics are ridiculous and it’s more cheese than cake, but everyone looks genuinely happy and it’s all so sweet! (Sweet – like cake – boom!)

Score: 4/10

Maxim Montana: I love this. I think it’s amazing. I like the simplicity and the innocence. Unlike so many other acts, they look happy on stage — something that worked very well for Estonia back in 2001. It’s catchy and easy to remember, and a good pick-me-up on a bad day. The song worked really well on a small stage in the Latvian Final, and I hope they can translate that performance to the big stage in Copenhagen.

Score: 10/10

Padraig: This has a very strong whiff of “Smelly Cat” about it. You know, the song Phoebe used to sing in Friends? Because it’s essentially a load of nonsense, yet at the same time, kinda cute. Which is fine for an eccentric singing masseuse in a fictional cafe, but at Eurovision? The effort comes across as amateurish and at best half baked. A sickly sweet exterior with a gooey centre. Yuck.

Score: 2/10

Vebooboo: So in the official video this group’s lip synch is so off track that RuPaul would order them to be executed. Luckily Aarzemnieki isn’t a group of drag queen wannabes and rather a legit group of artists. The lyrics are playful and if you read ruul ruul deep into them you grasp the meaning that sometimes the most trivial things in life can be the toughest. Or perhaps I just want to see that depth and what really appeals to me is the thought of gorging myself on a cake for 3 minutes straight? Regardless, I hope this song makes it through, because it offers up something just a bit different…including such over the top artificial British-English accents in song.

Score 6.5/10

All 19 members of our jury rate each song. However, we only have room to share 10 written reviews. Here are the remaining seven scores.

Francheska: 0.5/10 (But if they need a Matryoshka apron and oven mittens for their stage performance, I’ll lend it to them)

Mario:  4/10

Zach: 0.5/10

Patrick: 0/10

Mike: 1/10

James L: 3/10

William C: 3/10

Sami: 7.5/10

Ramadan: 0/10

The highest and lowest scores are removed before calculating the final score. We have dropped a low of 0 and a high of 10.

The Wiwi Jury Verdict: 3.03/10

You can check out our latest Eurovision 2014 reviews and rankings on the Wiwi Jury page. You can keep up-to-date on the latest Eurovision news and gossip by following the team on Twitter @wiwibloggs and by liking our Facebook page.

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Leon
Leon
9 years ago

I can’t believe any of the “juries” gave this entry anything above a 1.

Janis
Janis
9 years ago

I am from Latvia and I have a really big SHAME that Latvians choose so awful song for Eurovision. Lets hope, that in next year people will be much smarter and will make a better choice.

Alex
Alex
9 years ago

*superfinal, not semifinal.

Alex
Alex
9 years ago

Regarding Dziesma… I’m still scratching my head over what people saw in “Pedeja Vestule” if they didn’t speak Latvian. I’m sure the lyrics were wonderful for those who understood them, but for me there was little musical appeal. It just sounded like a plain ballad with an unnecessary rhythmic backing track. Also, the audience probably saw “Stay” as just a regular dance song and weren’t impressed. I mean, it isn’t really much more than a typical dance track, except that the vocalist is better than usual. This song is different – everyone admits that it’s unusual, but on top of… Read more »

Nathan
Nathan
9 years ago

I did not bake a cake while listening to this, but rather my mind drifted to sipping a nice frothy simple chocolate milkshake and it was a cappacino flavored macaron – light, airy and just perfectly chewy. Whoever just thought this song reminded him or her of smelly cat, needs to take a shower – you clearly have been volunteering with the animal shelter too much, or consider changing your career – being an animal control maniac is making you lose it!

gavin
gavin
9 years ago

MoMo has nailed it… its a hash cake init.

Chesco
Chesco
9 years ago

This song would be perfect for some advert involving mobile phones or Lurpark butter, but for a contest like Eurovision, it is a bit puerile. Still, it is cute and catchy, which seems to be the only thing that counts

MoMo
MoMo
9 years ago

Cake to Bake? Am I the only one that thinks its laced (pun intended) with stoner subliminals? Either way its sweet and made me smile.

Rainer
Rainer
9 years ago

@Ranting Ruby: THAT it is! 🙂 you’re right! I like this song – it’s not a joke, the lyrics are more than only 5 or 6 words about love or angry – latvia this year not want to reinvent music – the only have a good and catchy song on stage, performed with fun and happiness. I hope it qualified to the final on saturday !

Gavin
Gavin
9 years ago

I know that 0 points is a big part or Eurovision but it seems many on the wiwi panel use it far too easily. I first heard this and my jaw dropped. It was bad, but amusing. So bad – and something tounge In cheek. The. It was In my head for the rest of the day. As much as it’s not a favourite I think you can have a lot of fun with this song, celebrating the bad style but having a laugh! Embrace the humour, chant the chorus, grab a slice of Victoria sponge Along with another drink.… Read more »

Ranting Ruby
Ranting Ruby
9 years ago

Doesn’t anyone get that this is the ultimate ANTI-Eurovision anthem? It looks and sounds like a 3 minute hung-over student jam session … and is the perfect ironic antidote to all the over-produced costume changes, dance routines, fireworks, hairspray, strangulated modulations, etc etc that we’ve come to know and love at EV. Sweet and innocent and not taking itself too seriously, you’ve gotta love such “back-to-basics” subversive radicalism!!! (Hasn’t got a prayer, obviously.)

Marcelo N
9 years ago

@ ayayaya – Spot on! The opening line each year should be “Wilkommen, bienvenue, welcome!” 😉

@ Thiefo – My “outrage” was tongue-in-cheek 😉

ayayaya
ayayaya
9 years ago

I really can’t understand how anyone could give this a 0/10. It’s not THAT bad. If you ignore the lyrics, it’s a perfectly normal song. Sometimes I wonder why people who are that picky even watch Eurovision.

Thiefo
9 years ago

Marcelo, I’m not comparing the quality of them, (from your reaction I think we’ll agree, Suus is awesome and Cake to Bake is not half as good) I mentioned both of them together because they may have nothing to do with each other except that at some point, somebody thought they didn’t belong in ESC, for whatever reason. A lot of people thought Suus was too boring and that Rona was just screaming, and that it didn’t “fit” in Eurovision but more to a screaming contest or something. So, if you think about it, now is the same with Cake… Read more »

beccaboo1212
9 years ago

I hope their cake doesn’t have peanuts in it! Trust me, I’m allergic to peanuts.

Marcelo N
9 years ago

@ Thiefo – I quite agree on the variety issue and the fact that different is readily brushed off as “unfit”. But this song??
I almost had a stroke when you swept it into the same box as “Suus”.

@ Wiwibloggs – it’s all right to vote as high or as low as you wish, of course. Even to come up with unlikely explanations. I will just bide my time and laugh a last laugh as I see this crash and burn on stage while Mariko and The Shin give us all a treat.

suzy will win
suzy will win
9 years ago

how can you hate a song about cake? seriously

Dez
Dez
9 years ago

It’s my dead last.

Leon
Leon
9 years ago

This Latvian ditty sung in English will go down well with school kids and their elders at Uni, especially if everyone is having a go at the same time. It’s easy to remember and sing; add some alcohol and you’ve got an instant party. 5/10

Dan
Dan
9 years ago

How someone is able to get out in public and perform this “song” without (at least) blushing of embarrasment is beyond me! I suspect the singer lost a bet and this is his punishment! We should all fell aorry for him!

Thiefo
9 years ago

I wonder why people keep saying “this isn’t fit for Eurovision”, not only for this song but for others (hello Three Minutes to Earth!) that’s trying to fit the event in a box and only shows how narrow-minded people can be. What is “fit” for Eurovision then? Because on the other side, the same people is constantly complaining that so many songs sound like other songs, (hello to the hundreds of comparisions between other songs and Euphoria) that there are always so many ballads, so much schlager, so much pop, etc. but when a song that sounds different comes, everybody… Read more »

raisa
raisa
9 years ago

0/10 sorry latvia worst song from 37 🙁 I dont think you care about winning Sorry Latvia and georgia by far the worst songs this year 🙁 I have to say my top 5 are
5-uk
4-Malta
3-armenia
2-lithuania
1-austria

Z24
Z24
9 years ago

Dead-last of all the 37. It’s not only that the song is poor and annoying, but they just eliminate all the gold they had and send the rubbish. I wouldn’t be as harsh if it was sent by Malta, a country that only offers average and poor. But eliminating sure qualifiers like Stay and high-end art like Pedeja Vestule and Revelation (the best of all the NF’s this year) just shows that Latvia doesn’t care. It’s the eastern old UK. To add insult to the injury, a Latvian music award show was held some time later to Dziesma. The “best… Read more »

HKDick
HKDick
9 years ago

I can’t believe those giving this zero points. It’s a super charming melody and though the lyrics are amusing it certainly isn’t in the category of joke song. I totally expect this to qualify and one of the few that was memorable from the first listen. 8/10

Dave
Dave
9 years ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBepjR92qFc#t=65
I love this song from Kállay- Saunders András

bav
bav
9 years ago

For me this is great song, but not fit to the Eurovision.

Nebi
Nebi
9 years ago

This song will be in the final. It’s charming and catchy and the three minutes fly by. It will appeal to women and adult men. I really don’t get all the hate tossed towards this song and performance. But luckily there is no correlation between the hate tossed out on this board and the songs success in the contest.

Zolan
Zolan
9 years ago

A little antacid for those who struggle with sugared lard,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0V4TZAyd8I

Lio Anch
Lio Anch
9 years ago

How can someone give 0 to any song?
You may dislike a song, so give it 1 (the scale should be 1-10, IMO).
Any song is someone creation, which noone can be so rude and gice it a 0!
Just think about it!!!

Dhani
9 years ago

why have you only been reviewing all the chance less songs lately???