The Wiwi Jury — our in-house panel of music unprofessionals — has cranked up the music and sharpened our claws to review the songs competing in the final of Uuden Musiikin Kilpailu (UMK) 2017, Finland’s national selection for Eurovision. The next entry comes from Zühlke. Does the song live up to its title? Read on to find out.
Zühlke – “Perfect Villain”
About Zühlke
Catharina Zühlke took part in Finnish Idol in 2013 and finished in joint fifth place. Since then she has been recording music in Finnish under the name Zühlke. “Perfect Villain” is her first single release in English and she describes it as an “international and fierce urban pop song with attitude, depth and message”.
“Perfect Villain” reviews
Robyn: Look, I’m not even close to being a comic books nerd, but even I know that X-Men is Marvel Comics while Kryptonite is DC Comics. Totally separate universes. And they’re both trademarked terms, so “Perfect Villain” could never make it to Eurovision without a rewrite. But aside from that (sigh), “Perfect Villain” is a sassy track which Zühlke delivers with loads of attitude.
Score: 6/10
Bernardo: Scratch the lyrics, keep the production, keep the voice. Zühlke has sassy powerful vocals and I’m beyond excited to see her on stage — I’m sure it will give life to this song. However, I can’t let go of the fact she repeats X-Men and kryptonite several times, reminding me of the lyrical mess before us.
Score: 4.5/10
Josh: Firstly, in Zühlke’s promotional photos, she looks like an angry Trijntje Oosterhuis with eyebrows so snatched that Miss Fame is likely to sue the company that makes her eyebrow tape. Secondly, Zühlke’s voice is great and she hammers home the attitude and sass. The lyrics, however, are appalling. This is worse than rhyming fire with desire, and that’s already a big no-no. Nice try. See you again next year.
Score: 3/10
Kristin: Kryptonite has nothing to do with the X-men! However, they would probably be defeated by this song. They’d simply die of boredom. This rubs all my wrong nerves. Especially the lyrics. Who in the name of Wolverine gave permission for this?! The song itself is not half bad, but it’s far from being good. The only thing positive about this disaster is Zühlke’s voice. She is fierce. Other than that, I’m out. Check please!
Score: 3/10
Forrest: Zühlke’s powerful voice is dripping with sass from the first word and, while a bit simplistic, the track builds nicely through the first verse and pre-chorus. Unfortunately, when it gets to the chorus, the lyrics careen out of control and take the whole song down with them. Perhaps I’m in the minority, but an X-Men/Kryptonite metaphor is not the first thing I reach for when trying to describe a troublesome relationship.
Score: 3/10
Sami: I really like Zühkle herself — she is a strong independent woman with an amazing voice. I don’t dislike the song either. It has lots of attitude and sass. As a big fan of superhero movies, I do appreciate the references, but as my fellow jury members said, those two things have nothing to do with each other.
Score: 7/10
Jordi: After giving a listen to Zühlke’s entry, I needed the X-Men to rescue me. She can do wonders with those vocals. But this song doesn’t fit her voice at all and the lyrics make no sense. Her song sounds promising in the first bridge, building and embracing power and darkness, but gets cheesy with all those Superman references. I’m kinda pissed! She needs to come back with a song that doesn’t fall short.
Score: 4/10
William: Her voice is among the strongest in the competition, and it’s full of sass, attitude and energy. But then she starts singing about the X-Men and kryptonite in what proves to be a hot lyrical mess. The perfect villain? He’s your songwriter, honey. To make matters worse she includes an awkward, somewhat forced pause to match the lyrics at 1:08. Sadly that silence may be the most memorable aspect of this.
Score: 3.5/10
In the UMK Wiwi Jury, we have 19 jurors but only room for 8 reviews. The rest of our scores can be found below:
Anthony: 5.5/10
Antranig: 10/10
Chris: 5.5/10
Dayana: 5/10
Edd: 0.5/10
Jovana: 6/10
Luis: 5/10
Natalie: 3/10
Patrick: 7.5/10
Ramadan: 4/10
Rezo: 5/10
Before calculating the average score, the highest and lowest scores are dropped. This is to remove outliers and reduce potential bias. We have removed a low of 0.5 and a high of 10.
Generally the song is good, it starts well and then the chorus comes, I listen to the lyrics… and that’s it. Shame cause she has a great voice but she could have a better song.
@Colin – X-Men IS a trademark.
talking poor rhyming… remember the year when both UK and Ireland rhymed “together” with “forever”? this is even worse…….
To @(J)ESC fanatic – when we rank the songs, we are not saying that it is a ‘good’ or ‘bad’ song – we’re just explaining what enjoyment we get from it, according to our own tastes. I personally hate R&B production, mid-tempo ballads and sassy, vibrato voices – hence my low score for Zuhlke. And as for “Shampanjataivas” @yikes, I love striking visuals, an uplifting anthemic chorus, and – most of all – fun. Also “Shampanjataivas” is the most viewed video on the UMK channel after Eini and recently Saara Aalto, so it must be quite an enjoyable ‘disaster’. I… Read more »
Waw … I don’t understand why you wrote such bad reviews on her. Like seriously ? Okay we get it that you want “Circle of Life” for Finland this year (and it’s your choice … I respect that) but it’s not a reason to underrate this song. You guys said that her song was a disaster … just because of two comic names … Come on, that’s not fair.
I think that her song is catchy, she has a good voice and I think it’s original … The X-Men and Kryptonite might be confusing but the song itself is good.
the song isn’t quite that good, but the music video is fierce
Horrible lyrics and cringeworthy 101 beat.
Not to mention, sadly, she isn’t telegenic at all.
I’m really upset by these reviews 🙁 Can NONE of the wiwi jury see the references she is trying to make? So what if X-Men and Kryptonite don’t go together?! It’s about the message of this beautiful song and not some silly lyric
@Purple Mask, thanks 😉 Yeah, probably a less frequent combination, but proud to be both. 😉
The bad lyrics certainly don’t help but it is not like the song was going great to that point. Finland can do better.
Ah, thanks Colin. That clears up a lot of the questions I had earlier.
So… you’re a comic book nerd who is also a Eurovision fan? That’s an intriguing combination 🙂 x
Hey, a HUGE comic-book nerd here: I would be insulted *if* she actually said: ”Would they (X-Men) lose their powers too, if THE KRYPTONITE was you.” That would make no sense, because, as stated, they belong to a different comic-book universe. However, she said: ”Would they lose their powers too, if THEIR KRYPTONITE was you.” That is the key difference. Kryptonite is often a metaphor for someone’s weak spot. She obviously just wanted to give nods to both Marvel and DC. PS. I don’t think the lyrics would have to be changed since they are characters and not networks or… Read more »
@beccaboo1212: I’d blame Brexit. 😀
#ForeverRemoan
So many nasty reviews lately. What’s going on? 🙁
If you look up hot mess in the dictionary – its a link to the lyrics of this song. Who on earth okayed this? Even comicbook nerds would be turned off by the Kryptonite faux pas. Id take la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la over this steaming pile of hot messiness.
Edd also gave the disaster “Shamppanjataivas” a 9.5 (!) last year, while the jury as a whole rated it 3rd (!!) out of 18 (!!!). Sandhja was 9th and they had 3 finalists in their bottom 6… story checks out!
@Zack Her lyrical intentions are clear to everyone. It’s just that they are beyond awkward 🙁
The X-Men don’t lose their powers to Kryptonite; that would be Superman! You don’t need to be good at English to understand why that lyric is technically wrong. (Not to mention, use of trademark?)
Having said that, I actually LOVE this vocal, the music and especially the video. If this is good live, it could be a dark horse to win UMK. 🙂
@Zack
True…
@Antranig Exactly, this is the dark horse to win UMK. I’m surprised that other Wiwibloggers who speak english more fluently can’t understand the lyrics when she’s comparing weakness to Kryptonite. Kinda surprised me.
@(J)ESC To be fair, Ed said that Australia wouldn’t even qualify last ESC that it was a light version of Norway. We all know how that saga ended. Its only their opinion and not definitive, we’ll see on Jan 28.
I love this one. Great song. Good luck to Zühlke! 🙂
Don’t take the X-Men and Cryptonite-thing so seriously.
Everyone has the weak spot, their cryptonite.
When things go wrong, you need superheros and wait for them to resque you. We all need our X-Men.
I would like to listen that song in Eurovision. It’s so catchy. Also original. I didn’t heard any song like this in ESC. My abolutely favourite. 10/10
PS
Her voice is flawless and A.M.A.Z.I.N.G
Shameful.. Wiwi has botched yet another national final before they’ve even finished it. It’s Emma or Zuhlke for the win, but Zuhlke would do better in Kiev.
This song is probably the worst of the selection.. even the cavemen song is better, at least that one is funny while this is just pathetic.
Easily the best song in Finland for me. And I think the lyrics are perfectly fine in a song about heroes and villains. It fits!
Edd gave this a 0.5? WTF? It’s really underrated. Very catchy song and strong voice. It’s either Emma or her for the win.
7.5/10
The lyrics of this song are horrible. And the overall melody is really below average.
It’s not a bad song (I can’t really understand why it’s so much lower than Reach Out for the Trash). She has strong vocals, she has a cute rhythm, she has meh lyrics… but the song is overall enjoyable. Nothing more to add because there’s no competition this year in Finland with Emma Sandström, though.