Since winning Iceland’s national selection for Eurovision 2014, kid-friendly punk band Pollapönk have been busy re-working their song into English and filming their official music video. At the moment the odds suggest that their fun, funky song “No Prejudice” won’t qualiy for the final. But the bookies have said that about Iceland in the past—and been proven wrong. Pollapönk recently spoke with William Cahill, a wiwiblogger in Ireland. Here are the highlights.
Congrats on winning in Iceland! Why did you decide to compete in Songvakeppnin, and were you shocked when you won?
It is dream come true to get a big stage like this to get our message to as many people as possible. We were very happy to win the Icelandic Söngvakeppni. First of all, it is a fun thing to do. We are in this to have a good time and get the Pollpönk message to people. The first thing we thought of was how we were going to make this fit to our day jobs. That has been a puzzle but it is all going well now.
We’ve already seen your brightly-coloured suits in the national final, in your video, and in your publicity shots. What’s the significance of them?
The colors are the Pollapönk identity. Well, the tracksuits are the band’s outfits for all occasions and have been for many years. Extremely flexible and good gig suits and for dancing as well. We are not caught in public without them as Pollapönk. But for the finals here in Iceland we took it a step further and had high class “Tuxedo” suits tailor made for each of us in our colors Pink, Blue, Yellow, and Red, and I do believe that gave us a bit extra for our performance in the finals.
Can you reveal anything about your staging at this point?
There are meetings taking place every day on that matter. One thing’s for sure! It will be amazing!
How did you guys meet?
Pollapönk was founded in 2006 by guitarists Haraldur Freyr, Gíslason and Heiðar Örn Kristjánsson of the Icelandic post-punk trio Botnleðja. They created Pollapönk when graduating as Bachelors of Education from the University of Iceland. The purpose was to write and perform music that children and adults alike would enjoy and be able to sing-a-long to. The first album Pollapönk was a major hit in Iceland. In 2007 drummer Arnar Þór Gíslason who is Haraldur‘s brother and bassplayer Guðni Finnsson joined Pollapönk which then became a quartet. Pollapönk have made two more albums, and played numerous gigs for children and grown-ups all over Iceland. In everyday life Haraldur Freyr is the chairman of the Association of Pre-school Teachers, Heiðar Örn is a Pre-school teacher and Arnar Þór and Guðni are professional musicians. I met my younger brother when he was born, Heiðar when I was 11 years old and Guðni 20 years ago.
Some of your members are preschool teachers. Do the children know you will be competing in Eurovision and what are their responses, if they have any?
Yes, they do and are very excited. They find it unreal that their teachers are on TV all the time.
Furthermore, you describe yourself as a punk band for kids. Do Icelandic kids (and adults) like that in Iceland?
Of course. Children should be treated with respect when it comes to music. Children likes all kinds of music. And if it is done with ambition they will like it.
Do you think people get the message of your song, and have you yourself ever experienced prejudice in your own lives?
The song Enga fordóma (No Prejudice) is about a young person who has the habit of stuttering around others and fears to be mocked or bullied because of this. With this song it is Pollapönk’s aim to help eliminate all bullying and prejudice as everyone has the right to live in peace and harmony with the rest of the world. We think that the world needs to hear the “no prejudice” message. Especially from middle age, heterosexual, white men like us. Being middle age, heterosexual, white men makes us a majority group and we believe that we should use this opportunity to point out the injustice in this world. Of course we know that it will not instantly make the world a better place. It is our small contribution. We have experienced prejudice in our lives being male preschool teachers. We have also been discriminatory. We believe that you have to look inside regularly an look at your own prejudice and change you behavior.
Why did you decide to change your song from Icelandic to English?
We think that the message of the song is so important that it was necessary so that more people could understand what we are all about.
We here at wiwibloggs love the message of your song and the song itself. But some Eurovision fans brand you as a joke act. How do you respond to these people?
We can assure you that we are no joke. We are in this all the way. We hope our message will get through to the beautiful people of Europe. We will fight prejudice and discrimination with love.
Why have you not been doing any promotion at events such as Eurovision in Concert or the London Eurovision party?
We are sorry to say that we don’t have a budget to tour before the contest. We have to find other ways to promote the band to Europe.
What has been the reaction in Iceland to your song “No Prejudice”?
The support from Iceland has been amazing. The song is the most popular song in Iceland and we feel that the hole nation is on our side.
Finally, do you have a message for our readers here on wiwibloggs.com?
No prejudice! Spread the word.
Thank you Pollapönk and best of luck to you in Copenhagen!
William Cahill is our Irish correspondent. Follow him on twitter @williamcahill16. Follow the team from wiwibloggs.com on Twitter @wiwibloggs and keep up with the latest Eurovision news by liking our Facebook page.
OGAE Russia just gave Iceland 7 points… 🙂 and Austria 6 points!
@Padraig That’s just their style. Good song is boring, unique song is outstanding.
I’ve wondered as time has gone on whether a lot of the objections to this song are simply due to the genre. This kind of straight-up rock song isn’t frequently seen in Eurovision.
OK, so they have a message…This reminds me of grades 5-12 when at literature we had to analyze what the author of a poem or novel intended to transmit and all that analysis just became a big non-sense, that by the end I was just thinking if the pour author thought about so many things he would not have had time to write that thing… so, as far as I listened every contestant pretends to have a message, an amazing song and stage and so on…Do they really believe in that or they just try to put us to slip?… Read more »
LOVE this song!!
@David Sometimes I wish I could do that! 😛 Because I do the same as Marcelo, listen to the songs over and over again, grow to love them, only to see some of them flop at the end! It can be so frustrating! haha But on the other hand, I can’t deny I love to do that, I love hearing the songs as soon as they are out, and listen to them over and over again, I’m not exaggerating here, my itunes tells me I’ve heard some of them for almost 200 times so far! I guess it is amazing… Read more »
@Marcelo N – I have not listened to any of the songs. I wait for the shows. That way I get the full impact of hearing it for the first time.
One more thing which has been bothering me for weeks about many comments (even from the Wiwibloggs members): many people write “when I first listened to it… now, after a second listen…” What, you don’t listen to these songs a lot? I mean, I’ve had them on my phone ever since I could get each of them, and they’ve been playing while on the bus, walking to and from work, etc. Like, we’re all busy and we all have lots of things to do, and I suppose we all have lots of music on our devices. But we define ourselves… Read more »
12 iceland
10 polska
8 ukie
7 uk
6 austria
5 latvia
4 swiss
3 netherlands
2 norway
1 belarus
points from portugal
My first and second evaluations of this song and video have in position to qualify for the May 10 final, and I expect that they will.
No joke act at all! It may be a no for many, a maybe for others; but there’s definitely something in it. I agree with Thiefo that learning that most of the members of the band are involved in preschool education helps us understand it all. And as an educator myself, I know how unusual it is to find male teachers of little kids, and I salute them!
Let’s all have a blast at ESC listening to this colourful song 🙂
As a song for kids is a good song. How it will fare with ESC audience remains to be seen. The jury will kill them but who cares what those tight minds think.
Hmmm, it’s great that they want to spread their message of tolerance and all, but couldn’t they have done it with a better song? Still a no from me.
Now that I’ve learned some of them are pre-school teachers and that they consider themselves as a “punk band for kids” gives a lot more sense to how colorful and happy they look all the time 😛
I’ve changed my mind about them and their song a lot since they won the NF, from completely hating the song, to slightly liking it and now I think I’m loving these guys.
I have to say the more I listen to it the more it grows on me.
It certainly wont win but they deserve to be in final.
Far from a joke act. Good luck Iceland