Serbia’s Luke Black on his “cyber-punk” Eurovision song: “It’s a wake-up call”

nme.com:

Eurovision 2023 entry Luke Black has spoken to NME about what went into his “cyber-punk, hyper-pop” song ‘Samo Mi Se Spava’ – and how he hopes it “sends a wake-up call” to viewers and his home nation.Black’s dramatic entry made it through the semi-finals earlier this week to be competing in the grand final in Liverpool tonight (Saturday May 13).

With the song’s title translating to ‘I’m Just Sleepy’ and the chorus ‘I just wanna sleep forever, I like it better when I dream‘, the Grimes and Bring Me The Horizon-esque ‘Samo Mi Se Spava’ was born of the artist feeling uneasy with the state of the world.“I had an initial idea of a mantra before the pandemic saying, ‘I just want to sleep for a long time’,” Black told NME from backstage at Eurovision 2023. “There was a moment in 2019 where I was talking to my mom and I had a very intense conversation and said, ‘Listen, there is so much pressure and so much negative energy’ – you could feel something was coming up.“I just really wanted to go back home because I’d been living in London for a couple of years.

I just wanted to sleep and play video games. I just couldn’t handle the world. Then that all only became more so when the pandemic hit.”Black then escaped from London to his native Serbia where they had looser COVID restrictions, when everything changed.“They tricked us into going into a camp,” he said. “It was like a quarantine zone where they said we couldn’t go home but not go out, but they actually put us in a bunker.”His producer then sent him the melody to what would become the song while in quarantine, and the artist used a friend’s phone to sing and record the demo.“Once I broke out of the bunker, I went home and recorded it properly,” he said.