As I need to get away, this’ll be a very short, sharp single-listen assessment of Turkey’s 2007 Eurovision entry, Shake It Up Şekerim. Kenan is Kenan Doğulu, the Turkish pop singer who was internally selected by TRT and wrote the song himself; the title mixes English with Turkish, with “şekerim” meaning “my sweet” or “my darling”.
It’s very much an ESC song of the 2000s, as Wogan will probably say: a simple chorus which is nearly repetitive enough to grate but not quite, lots of movement and costume shenanigans on stage, that sort of Aegeanpopstil that we’ve heard a lot of lately … Kenan’s got a lot of fans here and looks like he’s going to have a good go at this thing.
At this point, on 4 May, Helsinki was still ahead of us. Turkey was due to perform 26th in the semi-final on 10 May, so my comments about the staging were based on previews and rehearsals rather than a contest performance I had actually seen. The eventual staging did indeed deliver the movement and visual business, with four dancers initially concealed beneath a gold cloth, gold visuals, and Doğulu in a red-and-gold jacket covered with approximately 1,450 Swarovski crystals.
And, as it turned out, he really did have a good go. Turkey qualified from the semi-final in third place with 197 points, then finished fourth in the 12 May final with 163 points, performing 22nd.
As for my own opinion? I really haven’t seen enough to form one! Looks all right though, generally speaking.
