Song Of The Day 5/6/2014: Mariya Yaremchuk - "Tick-Tock"

I’m Ovision – Eurovision!: Today's 2014 Eurovision Song Contestant comes from Ukraine, where they must be saying "tick-tock" for entirely different reasons these days. (Give me a break. I don't do political humor. Who do I look like, Mort Sahl?) I really don't have much of a valid reason for throwing "Tick-Tock" in the mix this week, except I thought the present situation with Putin oiling down his pecs in full view of the Kiev Children's Choir might provide some topical currency, but even that quaint imagery isn't satisfying my accountants.

So here's what I've been able to glean about "Tick-Tock" thanks to an exhaustive Eurovision preview from a UK website called, as you might have expected, So So Gay: "This was the first song to be chosen this year, but it really took them a long time to know what to do with it. The chorus is hooky, so it always had potential, but in its original form it was a mess. However, when in doubt, get the Swedes in, and that’s what they’ve done." I don't know specifically which Swedes they brought in for "Tick-Tock." Maybe the guy who plays Eric on True Blood.

As far as interpretations of this song are concerned, lest you believe it was some Alan Parsons-like meditation on the inescapability of chronology or a musical footnote to the work of Stephen Hawking, the official Eurovision Song Contest site clears it up:

The main message in Mariya's performance is the same as in song itself – this is a love story in music and in dance. Two heroes – Him and Her – are trying to find real feeling through time. The only way for them to catch this amazing feeling is to fly over time and through time. Tick-Tock is like a clock symbol, the real living tick-tock mechanism that the singer created on stage.

Hey, looky over there -- Putin's riding bare-chested on the horns of a moose!