Song Of The Day 5/18/2015: Nadav Guedj – “Golden Boy” (Israel)

I'm Ovision -- Eurovision! 2015: All right, Mad Men's over, so finish up your Coke and we'll move on to business at hand. One of the very select, small number of Eurovision 2015 songs I unapologetically enjoy is from Nadav Guedj, or as he’s already been labeled in the world press, “The Israeli Justin Timberlake.” Such comparisons are inescapable when you’re a solo male artist blessed with agreeable screen presence doing dance-oriented music, but “Golden Boy” bears all the hallmarks of a youth spent in the Lake o’ Timber.

What I like most about this song is its denial. There are very few subjects or approaches that can almost immediately make a song worth your while regardless of style, and being in blissful denial is one of them. (See: John Waite’s “Missing You”; “Turn It Off” from The Book of Mormon.) Guedj does the gracious favor of tipping us off to this in the intro, before settling into a standard party jam. But it’s a party jam tainted with the vestiges of lacerated regret and pain, and don’t you ever forget it.

I also like that Geudj kept careful track of the customary, but apparently no longer enforced, time limitations to Eurovision Song Contest entrants, and lets you know about this fact at the end: “We gotta go! Three minutes!” Also, you’re not going to believe this, but watching this video at first I thought Nadav was an entertainer who’d been around the block a few times: He was polished, confident, and looked like a nice 29-year-old, maybe even 30-year-old dude going out and having a swell time in the upswing of his career. Then I discovered that this composed, agreeable-on-the-eyes everyman is only sixteen. He can’t drink in America for another five years, although he’s perfectly welcome to come here and have an alcohol-fueled tabloid scandal any time he wants. In America we’ll happily eat our young, but if it’s imported all the better. Just kidding. Good luck Nadav!