Popjustice
  • Home
    • Briefing archive
  • Features
  • Playlists
  • Get Popjustice emails
  • About Popjustice
    • About
    • Popjustice: Est 2000
    • The Popjustice Twenty Quid Music Prize
  • Contact
    • General contact details
    • Submit music
  • Forum
Recent Posts
  • Congratulations to Charli XCX and Lorde: winners of the 2024 Popjustice Twenty Quid Music Prize
  • The 2024 Twenty Quid Music Prize: Shortlist
  • The 2023 Popjustice Twenty Quid Music Prize: Shortlist
  • Fine, let's do a Substack then.
  • The 2022 Popjustice Twenty Quid Music Prize: shortlist
Hello! In theory you should only be seeing this if you're using a mobile or tablet. How's the site looking? If anything's wonky click here and tell us so we can fix it. Thanks! x
Popjustice
  • Briefing
  • Features
  • Playlists
    • New Music Friday: The Popjustice Edit
    • Big Hit Energy
    • 21st Century Pop
    • 2018% Solid Pop Music
    • Full archive
  • About
    • About Popjustice
    • Contacting Popjustice
    • Send music
    • Popjustice: Est 2000
    • The Popjustice Twenty Quid Music Prize
  • Forum
  • The Briefing

Popworldcupjustice: Costa Rica vs Greece

  • June 29, 2014
  • Brad O'Mance

worldcupthing2header

COSTA RICA V GREECE

Guest referee:
Ciarán Gaynor — Pop critic

Costa-rica32 Theme tune to O Clone

“O Clone was — AS YOU WELL KNOW — a Brazilian tel­en­ov­ela which ori­gin­ally aired in 2001, but a dubbed version of the show has remained vastly popular through­out Latin America, and nowhere more so than in Costa Rica. In the interests of 'research' I have consulted a Portuguese inter­preter pal who informs me that this theme's lyric amounts to "a very illu­min­at­ing 3 minute lesson on what Jesus was all about". You don't get that with Hollyoaks. O Clone is about twin brothers who fall in love with a Brazilian woman who goes to live in Morocco with her deeply religious uncle and his friend who is an embry­olo­gist who clones animals. Apart from sounding decidedly bonkers, this is of course all heavily symbolic of 'the ethics of playing God', and given such 'lofty' subject matter the theme tune is appro­pri­ately epic. The song is remin­is­cent of several amazing Madonna ballads — par­tic­u­larly 'You'll See' — and the religious imagery is very much something Madonna would have 'dabbled' with in the pre-'Erotica' days. Perhaps this is why I have found myself returning to it, and even ventured to watch some of the show's opening episode. As I'm not familiar with Brazilian Portuguese I expected to find the show entirely incom­pre­hens­ible, but it's funny how the inter­na­tional language of soap tran­scends lin­guistic barriers. *Susan Sontag face*”

greece32 Theme tune to Erotas

“This theme is a snippet of George Perris' ballad 'Paizei o Erotas' and prompts the question: will this song contain the best 'Greek chorus' since the days of Sophocles? Sadly, the answer is no. And unfor­tu­nately for our plucky Greek contender, the song is paired with an unap­pet­isingly bland opening montage. The imagery it accom­pan­ies strongly resembles a certain breakfast cereal advert but there's certainly nothing 'special' about the song, which struggles to break free of its dull visual context. Erotas dram­at­ises the lives of wealthy Athenians but from what I've seen of it it's closer in spirit to Eldorado than it is to Dallas. I per­severed with the Erotas theme, sub­ject­ing it to repeated plays to see if it had subtle mysteries to reveal over time, but as Aristotle might have said, drama theme tunes require a certain gravitas and uni­ver­sal­ity which this theme tune can't muster. This is partly because George Perris sounds like a Hellenic Michael Bublé, but if that sounds like the sort of thing you've been hankering for and you're intim­id­ated by a lack of acquaint­ance with his mother tongue, you may be inter­ested in his recent English language album. Mind you, I fed the lyrics of 'Paizei o Erotas' through Google translate and the results were still all Greek to me."

Ciarán's full time score:

Costa Rica 4 — Greece 0

footballbullet

Now you can vote for your own favourite.

[poll id="65"]

Next up: France vs Nigeria

Previous Article
  • The Briefing

Popworldcupjustice: Netherlands vs Mexico

  • June 29, 2014
  • Brad O'Mance
Have a read
Next Article
  • Videos

The Saturdays — 'What Are You Waiting For?'

  • June 30, 2014
  • Brad O'Mance
Have a read
Further listening
Greatest hits
  • Mutya Keisha Siobhan: their amazingness is legally binding
  • Kloe interview: "I wanted the video to feel powerful — I don’t want to be a whiny victim"
  • Dua Lipa interview: "I feel like there’s magic in everything"
Further reading
  • 1
    Congratulations to Charli XCX and Lorde: winners of the 2024 Popjustice Twenty Quid Music Prize
  • 2
    The 2024 Twenty Quid Music Prize: Shortlist
  • 3
    The 2023 Popjustice Twenty Quid Music Prize: Shortlist
  • 4
    Fine, let's do a Substack then.
  • 5
    The 2022 Popjustice Twenty Quid Music Prize: shortlist
  • 6
    2021 Popjustice Twenty Quid Music Prize: Laura Mvula wins
Est 2000. Still going.
Socials

 Spotify
 Facebook
 Twitter
 Instagram
 Soundcloud

'Quick links'

About Popjustice
Contact Popjustice
Sign up for the newsletter 
Submit music
Est 2000
Twenty Quid Music Prize 

Playlists

21st Century Pop 
New Music Friday: The Popjustice Edit 
2018% Solid Pop Music 
The Sound Of Popjustice 
Playlist archive

© 2020 Popjustice Ltd. Scrolled to the bottom now you're here
  • Privacy, Ts & Cs, cookies etc
  • Corrections

Input your search keywords and press Enter.