The announcement by Static and Ben-El Tabori, which heralded the end of their joint professional career last Thursday, can be defined as the end of an era.
Without even one ounce of cynicism - there are those who will see it as nothing less than a cultural earthquake.
Even if it was expected, in light of negative publications and public relations crises that didn't characterize their path until recently, nothing happened in the world of Israeli pop, which, if we'll be honest - changed completely the moment these two appeared in the field, and started to shoot huge hits one after another, operating under the fixed formula And the winner of the soldering - in their words - "bass with frills".
Now that we've said all this and praised the (previously) successful duo for bringing a colorful, fun, foreign and professional pop culture to Israel, we can already say out loud that in terms of a musical product - the composition Static and Ben El has not worked for a long time. It's been a long time since a new song The two's didn't become a huge hit, certainly didn't generate a currency. "The Beach Road" and "Perms" were huge radio hits, marking them as the next hot thing in pop - a field that tends to change its heroes and style every few years anyway.
Static and Ben-El last show.
Photography: Aviad Tal
During the days of "Gold", "Todo Boom", "Namsta" and even "Bananas" (that is, the period when the two easily jumped between one cultural appropriation to another, in an act that would undoubtedly not have been accepted in the USA), every new single that Ben-El and Stat Boy released It is considered a media event that no culture section in Israel could ignore. But 2015-2018 has long passed, and it's not like the new songs were able to reproduce the success of their predecessors. Some of the readers of this column will be able to hum even one song from the two albums they released this year (one of their own and another with Omer Adam )? A not really wild guess would assume that not many. And the international career, well, there's nothing to talk about at all. The English songs lacked the charm of the Hebrew ones, and the connection with Pitbull didn't help either. Yes, the two still have a role to play in local culture and television. But As a duo, even if we don't take into account the recent scandals, the end has long been in sight. The lighting pole that collapsed last week during a concert in Eilat was another hint from the universe of this.Or a particularly sad metaphor for an inevitable fall.
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