From the Archive: The Glory of Vitas

(Note: originally written May 2016, which is why it references 6th form and so on. So, just imagine yourself whilst reading as an impressionable 15 year old being talked down to by someone a year older than you who thinks they're god's gift to journalism despite having never been published. So what's changed? Enjoy.)

In the aftermath of Eurovision, as we removed the rainbow streamers from our hair and wept over the failure of Poland's hippie Vlad the Impaler, a strange new sound was to be heard echoing around certain areas of the 6th form common room. A sound of hope, joy and commendable tongue gymnastics. A sound described by the Internet as 'weird Russian singer', a ‘trippy 70s looking performance with man in jumpsuit doing funny hand wiggle dance’ and the ‘Russian tongue song’. A sound created by the only true hero left in a time bereft of Lordi. The sound was Vitas, and his utter masterpiece, 7th Element; or Chum Drum Bedrum.

I’ve never seen another meme make so many people so happy and joyous in a time so filled with hatred, despair and self-recrimination than the exam period. I have seen it light up the faces of those haggard from endless, seemingly pointless exams. It’s like the spirit of Eurovision constantly floats above us, drawing out our sorrow and turning it into the vocal gymnastics of a bloke who likes to play the accordion surrounded by fish. This is the hero we deserve and the one we need right now; a technicolour, slightly camp knight.

Shockingly Vitas is quite fit, like a younger Richard Madeley

Anyone who has watched the video can testify to its glorious, kitschy absurdity: a group of Hollyoaks extras brandishing sparklers in a flagrant disregard for health and safety groove awkwardly, vaguely reminiscent of a Top of the Pops audience circa 1981. Vitas, dressed in a dodgy white cosplay of Star Trek’s Borg, is backed by a set of men wearing oven gloves on their heads. It can only be described as a fever dream of a half-remembered Eurovision entry from 1993 or for some, ‘like hallucinating’ and its impersonation will surely be a winning party-trick at the dinner parties of the future. And yet, for all its joys, you have to wonder why the internet hasn’t taken Vitas’ video for ‘Opera 2’, which shows him as a man with fish gills living in a bathtub filled with jars of fish and playing the accordion naked (believe me, I’m not making this up) to its heart in the same way? It seems a bit of an oversight on the part of the great meme gods in the sky.

I think the song’s success might be for a reason that isn’t simply its Eurotrash aesthetic and impression value; the song is inescapably positive in translation. Vitas sings ‘I’ve come to give this song’ 8 times in an undoubtedly benevolent endorsement of sharing that is unusual in our sex-obsessed, capitalistic music industry. Vitas himself is a metaphor for hard work, designing his own costumes and writing his own songs (even if we do question his aesthetic and/or writing abilities). The whole song feels like an uplifting and utterly transformative experience, as we move from a realm of love, dreams and crystal tears into one of trilling that I believe has genuinely lifted my soul from this mortal plain and taken it into a new stratosphere.

So when you next hear 6^th formers flapping around their tongues and squeaking with laughter, don’t roll your eyes and question their mental health; enjoy it. Because one day you’ll be in our position too- and you might need a bit of Europop to get you through.