Anyone who has seen the Eurovision Song Contest knows that it is a show like no other. Between elaborate special effects, quirky costumes, dramatic ballads, and upbeat pop songs peppered with awkwardly translated English lyrics, the long-standing European institution is ripe for parody. Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of the Fire Saga – starring Will Ferrell, Rachel McAdams and Dan Stevens and now streaming on Netflix – answer that call. Director David Dobkin, co-writer Andrew Steele, and Ferrell (who co-wrote the script with Steele) certainly have a knack for outwitting the absurd pageantry of the event, but when they needed to create the music for the shipment, they looked for a producer with a very particular Set of abilities.
Enter Savan Kotecha, a U.S.-born songwriter and producer who has written for almost every major pop artist in the past 20 years, including but not limited to One Direction, Katy Perry, and Britney Spears. Often working alongside colleagues like Max Martin, Shellback and ILYA, Kotecha has starred in some of Ariana Grande’s hit singles as well as hits n. # 1 Usher (“DJ Got Us Fallin ‘In Love”), The Weeknd (“Can’t Feel My Face”) and Maroon 5 (“One More Night”). He has also had a long-standing association with Demi Lovato, who has a small role in the Eurovision movie as Katiana Lindsdóttir, a formidable contestant from Iceland serving a hilariously tragic ending.
Although Kotecha hails from Austin, he is in a unique position to recreate the Eurovision sound for the film, given that he has spent 15 years living in his wife’s native Sweden, the birthplace of the 1974 Eurovision champions. and world pop giant Abba. Stereogum caught up with Kotecha to discuss the conception of music for the film, why writing songs for a film is a relief from writing radio hits, and how he came to genuinely love Eurovision after being completely baffled by his first vision.
STEREOGUM: When it comes to the music in the movie, you’re basically the boss who oversees the entire production, right?
SAVAN KOTECHA: Yes, I was the executive producer of music. So they introduced me to the initial process before they started filming and while the script was in its final drafts to craft some main songs and assemble teams to make songs that I didn’t necessarily have time to do. It was such a joyous and fun project.
STEREOGUM: Did you get to the set?
KOTECHA: They wanted me on set but I was stuck in Sweden with my family. David Dobkin was going to have me [play a role]. Apparently it was between the boy [Christopher Jeffers] who was chosen as the swedish rapper [Johnny John John] in the movie and I David said, “We decided to be younger,” and I said, “Okay.” [laughs]
STEREOGUM: Those were their voices on “Coolin ‘With Da Homies”. I love how you captured how silly and boxy hip-hop is that usually comes into Eurovision. Can you talk about the process behind creating that song?
KOTECHA: Andrew Steele, the screenwriter, along with Will [Ferrell] and he was talking about how much fun it would be to make the craziest rap song ever. I started laughing because I lived in Sweden for 15 years. [beginning] like in the early 2000s. It’s one of the things I remember going to Sweden, as the rappers there would rap in English and always use two or three year old jargon. I wanted to do something like that when you just use old jargon like you’re trying to be cool.
STEREOGUM: Did you ever see the [2013] Contestants of Eurovision PeR from Latvia, where one of the beatboxes types?
KOTECHA: I don’t think I remember them. I’m trying to think. I saw so much Eurovision in my days living in Sweden. It was all blurry. [laughs] I mean, at that point I would be writing for a great pop star and my wife would be in the other room and make me go see Eurovision. I thought, “I think you’re confused where the bar is, lyrically, right now.”
When you are in a country where no one speaks English around you, your English becomes lazy, right? So when you’re watching something as big as Eurovision, the whole country goes out to see it. You see how big it is, and English is not very good. You unconsciously begin to think that the bar is there, lyrically. I thought, “I can’t write songs and watch Eurovision at the same time!”
STEREOGUM: I remember the first time I saw Eurovision, and between the songs, the costumes, and the special effects, it’s different than anything I’ve seen. What was going through your mind the first time you saw this show?
KOTECHA: The first time I remember I just thought it was the weirdest and cutest thing. It took him a couple of years to be there, but he begins to appreciate the diversity and what a celebration of these different cultures really is. It is nonsense and it is ironic. I love the fact that you cannot vote for your own country. I remember that I was in a restaurant where people had a Eurovision party and they explained to me that “nobody is voting for that country because they did this to their people this year”. It is also political.
STEREOGUM: What did you learn about geopolitics only through the Eurovision vote?
KOTECHA: So much! Especially about the Eastern European countries that I didn’t even know existed. It is quite amazing. Also as a songwriter, you start to realize, like, oh wait, a lot of these songs, and that’s what I brought into this project, a lot of these songs are really, if you take the lyrics off and the bombastic production off and you’re just listening the melody. As a pop musician, melody is everything. Melody, for me, is a universal language.
Those great Britney Spears / Backstreet songs back in the day, they didn’t make sense lyrically, it was just that the tune was so good. It spread throughout the world. As a composer, that’s what I learned from him. It was like, as long as your tune is great, you can dress it how you want. A great melody is a great melody no matter what style you’re playing it. If a Eurovision song works like a cool R&B hip-hop song, it’s a great tune, you should be able to do all of those things. It’s just about arrangements around you.
STEREOGUM: Something that caught my attention was how much the Fire Saga song “Double Trouble” felt like it could be a great pop song, but it also felt like a very Eurovision song in the sense that it’s great and overwhelming and walk that line between ballad and song dance.
KOTECHA: That tune was just a tune, a chorus that I had saved on my phone. I was thinking that there was a particular artist that I was going in with, and I thought this would be good for that artist, for his voice.
STEREOGUM: I guess you’re not going to tell me who the artist was.
KOTECHA: No, I’m not going to say who it was. She could call me and be like [exasperated lady voice]: “What are you saying? Were you going to play that song for me? I wasn’t going to record that song! The chorus melody skeleton I just found on my phone, I was thinking, this could potentially be something for this artist I’ll mention it when I’m in the room with her, and we’ll shape her around. Voice. Instead, it was like, this is also a good Eurovision tune.
At the end, [collaborator] Rami [Yacoub] We picked up the guitar and changed it a bit to really go to the land of Eurovision. But again, the seed of the song was a very good pop tune, and that was what helped crack the code, and that’s what I advocated. And through all the other songs, the rhythm and its sound, I defended that for the people I had assigned. I was like, don’t make a joke of this. The melody has to be really good. “Volcano Man” is actually a really good tune and then you put the lyrics on top and the “Ross from friends“Electro production.[[[[Editor’s Note: Not to be confused with Ross From Friends.]In essence, however, it is a very good melody.
STEREOGUM: Did the lyrics come exclusively from you or were there comments from the writers and the director about that?
KOTECHA: It is a mixture of both. It depends on the song. Like “Coolin ‘With Da Homies” and “Running With The Wolves,” the writers had titles that they really liked. For me, if you have a great title, you do 50% of the lyrical work, then it is to fill in the blanks. Much of this was a discussion about who these characters are. Everything was approached that way. It was like I was getting closer [songwriting] with an artist This artist, what is your language? What would they say? What are the melodies they sing?
STEREOGUM: For this project, when writing the music, you are essentially creating the glue that holds this entire film together. Is it more or less pressure than writing a song for a great pop artist?
KOTECHA: It was a different kind of pressure. I’ve been writing for great artists, I’ve been doing it for a long time, so it’s a relief not to have that pressure, like to think, “Oh, this has to be a huge radio hit,” because then sometimes you can feel [like] You are in this commercial box. Like, “What is the trend now? What is going to work now? And you have to work within that box. Here, since we are not thinking about radio, we are only thinking about finding Eurovision, and you are not under pressure from” Oh, this has to be a hit song. “Open your mind and allow you to be more creative.
STEREOGUM: You’ve been working a lot with Demi Lovato for a decade. How did you launch this project to take her on board?
KOTECHA: I suggested it and contacted its people. I think they also contacted their agent. It is a combination of both that attracted her. It made it amazing. She is so underrated as a singer. She’s probably one of the top four or five, if not the top three vocalists of her generation, I think. It was a good move. She really enjoyed it, and she was a good athlete with everything.
STEREOGUM: So she was a good athlete about exploding?
KOTECHA: Yes. She is a very funny girl. She has a great sense of humor and all of that. We texted him after he saw a screening of the movie and he really loved it. I think it’s also exciting for everyone because it seems like he’s really taking advantage of something right now. I think everyone needed a movie like this.
Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of the Fire Saga is now streaming on Netflix.
