A few months back, while lounging around in a Turkish hotel lobby drinking too much red wine, we were suddenly taken back to the year 2000 and an immense pop song that we had totally forgotten about – as the lobby in question started blaring out ‘Private Emotion’, Ricky Martin’s seminal duet with Swedish singer Meja. (it’s kind of odd that they were playing the Meja version actually, as in Turkey he instead released a version with Sertab Erener, before her infamous Eurovision win was to happen three years later). ANYWAY. In the time since, we’ve been giving it a fair bit of airing on the old iPod, as it is an incredible song, let’s face it.
SO. It was with great delight to discover that Meja had recently popped up on Swedish television (on Moraeus Med Mera) to perform the song live again. And she’d played Ricky Martin at his swapping-your-duet-partner-for-a-big-local-star game, by replacing him with a Swedish popstar who’s currently quite big himself, as it happens. None other than Eric Saade!
Amazing.
Eric Saade & Meja – ‘Private Emotion’.
She might look a few years older, but she still sings it incredibly well. And young Saade steps up to the plate admirably well too, turning in one of his better vocal performances. Both do the song and all of its beauty justice. 13 years on it’s still all about the harmonies (Meja: ‘All About The Money’ reference alert!), and that melody. But mostly those harmonies. And it’s a timeless song brought back to life by its original singer, and a new partner for the next generation of pop fans.
We might be going a bit far here (we’re not), but this should have been recorded and released as a single. A charity single even. It’s so good!
Christ knows why this musical EVENT wasn’t publicised more. At the time of writing the sodding thing only has 57 views on YouTube. Let’s change that, shall we;
