Popworldcupjustice: Costa Rica vs Greece

COSTA RICA V GREECE

Guest referee:
Ciarán Gaynor — Pop critic

 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*”

 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

Now you can vote for your own favourite.

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