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A "cockatoo" storm proves: it's time for Omar Adam to grow up
Not so many years ago, we assumed that Omar Adam would conquer Israeli music with a dominance that had not been seen for years.
It was estimated that the talent, voice and charisma would be translated into classics as they matured and matured.
But in recent years a man seems to be standing still, stuck in an endless clown stage
Nadav Menuhin
03/01/2022
Monday, 03 January 2022, 08:17 Updated: 08:27
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Omar Adam (Photo: Shai Franco)
If you google "Omar Adam Storm", you will find that this headline refers to more than one event over the years. As someone who in the last decade is probably the most successful singer in Israel, almost everything a person does produces noise, and often also criticism. When you are a musician, the trouble with constant noise is that sometimes it just gets bigger than the music, easy and material if it stems from it.
The latest storm around Adam comes from his new single: the silly song - and unfortunately recorded - "Kakdila", written for him by Moshe Ben Avraham, Ofek Yekutiel, Maor Titon and Elad Trabelsi (the same team that is also behind Eden Ben Zaken's "Dance", among others ). The song describes a young girl, of Russian descent, who is all one big stereotype: for her "Hebrew is a difficult language, all day only Knight and Dee" and a few other generic words in Russian, she of course drinks, and she will tell you Putin. But the straw that broke the camel's back came with the nasty sophistication in the chorus, in which a man rhymes with her, and at the end of the sentence "she is not at all sure" stops before the last syllable - so that the ear will expect to hear that the young Russian is not a virgin at all. There's nothing amusing about it. It is embarrassing, childish, unconscious, abusive and degrading to those who come out and in particular women from the Commonwealth of Nations - everything is true. Need to explain at all? This is something that everyone should understand.
Such a sentence in the song - probably at the present, more sensitive point in time - is, so to speak, under all criticism.
There are things that are not supposed to come out of the rehearsal room, and it is very disappointing to find that Omar Adam has not yet learned it, even though this is not the first time he has gotten involved in this way.
One does not have to rummage deep in memory to recall that three years ago a man got into a very similar storm, with the song "Good Guys," which offended transgender people with that half-infantile smile.
So the line was "We found out in Thailand that girls are not exactly girls".
Adam did not write this song either (except for Elia Rossilio), but the subtle humor in both songs is a clear hallmark of him, and is completely identified with him.
More on Walla!
Merav Michaeli v. Omar Adam: "His new song is humiliating and racist. The words have devastating results"
To the full article
Omar Adam has often been praised, even by me, for the light-heartedness of his songs, which is so contrary to the tormented seriousness of the Israeli mainstream. After all, it was a revolution of joy. But as these two songs prove, it is sometimes no longer really graceful, but rather embarrassing. Such is, in contrast, also the wink of the writers of "Cockatoo" to an old song of a man, "Fields of Excuses" (also signed by Trabelsi and Tithon), from which they quote the sentence "No it did not happen with Nili, nor with her sister Sivan" . Originally the context was original and surprising, and here it is tired, indifferent and unnecessary. That's almost the whole story.
And it's just below its level. Not so many years ago, we assumed that Omar Adam would conquer Israeli music with a dominance that had not been seen for years. It was estimated that the talent, voice and charisma would be translated into modern classics at an increasing rate with maturation and maturation. But in recent years a man seems to be standing still, stuck in some endless clown stage, and falling over and over again in nonsense - which is reflected in weird songs like "Kokoriko" with Eden Ben Zaken or the puzzling cover version of the national anthem "Hatikva" he did with Noa Kirl. It is no coincidence that they did not leave a mark. It seems that his most memorable song from the last three years is the collaboration with Gidi Gov in an advertisement for Bezeq. The audience sees it and votes with their feet: Since the huge success of "Two Crazy Men" in 2018, in the last three annual parades of Galgalatz Adam has not seen the top ten from the inside.
In Israel, storms of this kind are more quickly forgotten than by Usain Bolt, and this is in case the public cares at all (often does not care).
There is no culture of cancellation here, nor does anyone ever apologize for anything - and that is a topic for separate conversation.
Probably this storm will also disappear, probably without leaving too many marks, and this song will also evaporate as it comes.
But a person is not expected to disappear from the map.
If he wants to realize his huge promise, he must mature as an artist: choose good materials, understand his public status and his responsibility to the audience, and not be tempted by the repressions that ultimately make him a joke.
After all, as he knows, in the end everything passes - so does the patience of the audience.
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