Incase any of y’all needed reminding that Israel’s Hovi Star is NOT a wallflower, he’s released his new single “Silver Spoon”, which puts any of his sceptics or critics firmly in their place.

This orchestral, autobiographic power ballad tells the story of surviving in a world, where – let’s face it – people have privilege. Israel’s Eurovision 2016 representative sat down for a chat with wiwibloggs about the song and the production of its stunning music video.

Hovi Star – “Silver Spoon”

Our girl sounds angry (in a good way!) What’s the basic story of your song and who are you singing to?

It’s called “Silver Spoon” and it starts with the sentence “you were born with a silver spoon in your mouth”. Basically, the song is about all those people that surround me, and that have been surrounding me throughout my whole life, who I look at from afar. They have it so easy all the time. If they want something, they either have rich parents, or they have the connections, or they have whatever. And I usually don’t have that, I usually have to work very hard and build everything with my two hands to accomplish something. I build it from the ground up. So the song is about the struggle that I’ve had throughout my whole life. That’s why in the video we see me as a little boy and the whole imagery of the crowns. It represents struggles that I had. I’m not singing it to anyone in particular, I’m just trying to voice my story. It’s not anger, it’s just making a point. That’s it.

Of course when the chorus comes around, I sing “go on and close all the doors, I’ll just get in through the window, there are some things you just can’t stop”, because throughout my life I’ve had very very big dreams and people used to make fun of me, telling me that it’s not possible, stop imagining things. I am always capable of getting what I want, because I believe that when you work hard that’s how you get to where you need to go. So that’s what the song means. It doesn’t matter if all the doors are closed, I’ll find a way to achieve.

Loving the mix of rock, strings and power ballad. How do you define this?!

I don’t define this. I’m just thinking of it as: I’m 32 years old now and I’ve been listening to music throughout my whole life and had it influenced me throughout my whole life, so it’s a mix of everything I love and everything I’ve ever absorbed musically. The only thing I can say is that it was very important to me that, if you compare it to other contemporary pop songs, it’s different, because it has real instruments. The arrangement for the string quartet was 17 pages long for “Silver Spoon”. So it’s not really a song, it’s a symphony, it’s an orchestra. It’s not just a regular song that someone sat on a computer and made, I don’t know how to define it genre-based, I just know that it was very important for this particular song and this whole album to use real instruments, with real meanings and real sounds, and not only computer generated stuff.

The video is on point! Oh my god! What mood or vibe did you hope to create?

I did everything on this video. I directed this video, I did the art for this video, I did everything on this video by myself because it was very important to me for it come out the way I imagined it to be. So, I really wanted to create a “Hovi Star Universe”, which is a continuation of “Made of Stars” and all the darkness that went on onstage and in the music video, but this time it’s a lot more dramatic because I’m doing it on my own.

So the only thing I wanted to do was make it look amazing and make it look very movie-esque, so not just like a music video. I really wanted to bring the story of the song to life with the music video. Of course in the most fabulous, gay, eccentric way, because I have to do that. The other thing is, I think there’s a huge magic factor about simplicity. Like there’s no CGI in it, there’s no huge production value. I mean it looks very good, but it was very important for it to be very simple and stay that way from beginning to end. I think we achieved that.

Finally, your spoon crown is so Game of Thrones. J’adore! Did you keep it?!

Of course I kept it. It’s in my living room, it’s sitting above my TV on a shelf and I will forever keep it. Actually, the spoon crown is one of the few things that I did not make for this video, the designer of the spoon crown is Or Avigad and he does a lot of avant-garde work. You should take a picture of it when we meet!

What do you think? Are you a fan of Hovi’s new single? Let us know in the comments!

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????
5 years ago

He is my favorite Israeli entry , and I very like his new song

Lars
Lars
5 years ago

Flamboyant

Yuri
5 years ago

I love your voice, your style and your music. My favorite Israeli singer.

Robert
Robert
5 years ago

Such a nasty person

Idan Cohen
Idan Cohen
5 years ago

If we wanna win again, we need a song like milim, but with the vocal performance of made of stars.

Hovi is one of the best vocalists I’ve heard!
His new song is also very good

La Signora
La Signora
5 years ago

He’s one my fav Israeli entries, I’m going to listen this new song asap

keith mawson
keith mawson
5 years ago

lovely to have some music from one of my favorite Eurovsion stars. Nice Hovi < been waiting for some new stuff from you. Amazing song and very heartfelt.