Róa (Iceland 2025)
Ooooh, I've been looking forward to listening to Róa again and again. VÆB have really captured my heart <3 and I am full VÆBgang! Their energy and attitude is really lovable, and they're great!
Typing ANY of this is harder than I thought it would be. I don't even want to review this. This song wasn't made to be reviewed. This song was made to be FELT. Any review feels like it's kind of taking away from the entire song to begin with, you know?
Here, I'll pop in a relevant quote from a fictional food critic:
"In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little, yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face is that, in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so."
But still. The show must go on.
Lyrics: 86%
Composition: 70%
Vocals: 72%
Staging: 82%
Vibes: 90%
Overall: 80.0%
It certainly doesn't hurt that I'm a Minecrafter; to me the graphics aren't cheesy at all. I'll see if I can sneak a photo of my builds in near the end ;)
Verdict: RÓANDI HÉR, RÓANDI ÞAR, RÓA Í GEGNUM ÖLDURNAR
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LYRICS - Total: 21.5/25 (86%)
Subject Matter: 8.5/10
Effective Use of Language: 5/5
Clarity: 5/5
Flow: 3/5
See, this is the kind of song we don't get very often. We get songs about love, peace, love love peace peace, loss, breakups, empowerment, relationships, patriotism and the occasional satirical song (like Espresso Macchiato).
This? This is a song about boat.
Ok, fine, it's a bit more than that. Just wanted to drop a quote from the brothers.
But yeah, it's a song of living life - a song of curiosity, dreams, free-spirited wanderlust. Songs like these aren't very common and until this song came along I didn't know what I'd been missing. Reading the lyrics really inspired me and made me feel free again. Not that I really know why that is. But it's beautiful.
This is also why I try not to get too nitpicky on the lyrics, because like I said, you can't just get the meaning of Róa by reading its lyrics. You have to feel them. There are things in the lyrics I wonder about, but their meaning definitely isn't one of them.
Some of the lines feel a little truncated (the last line of the chorus, and pretty much the entire bridge/prechorus), but that's really about the only issue I have with this.
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COMPOSITION - Total: 14/20 (70%)
Melody/Bass: 4/5
Instrumentation: 3.5/5
Development: 3/5
Coherence: 3.5/5
The melody and bass lines are generally pretty simple, and the way it ends with just hammering on the same repeated note felt kind of unimaginative, but then there's that violin instrumental. That violin is the MVP of this song and singlehandedly lifts it up to a 4 rather than a 3. I quite literally ugly-cried because it brought out so many emotions - for me, it encompassed the feeling of being at sea, of sailing, of the loneliness of being alone yet also the eagerness to explore and discover new lands, of eagerly coming home after a long voyage yet looking back on the trip with nostalgia. It ties everything together super well.
The song itself feels a little repetitive; probably because they went through the chorus like 7 or 8 times in total, and I'm not quite a fan of the bits where they sing in unison rather than in harmony, but it's not too bad.
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VOCALS - Total: 18/25 (72%)
Vocals: 13/20
Immersion: 5/5
Vocals were okay but not great. At points it kind of sounded like they were shouting rather than singing. But there's no denying the joie de vivre energy that they bring to the song, and it definitely feels like they sang their hearts and souls out for the performance.
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STAGING - Total: 20.5/25 (82%)
The Show: 9.5/10
The Story: 7.5/10
Outfits: 3.5/5
Very entertaining staging! Minecraft graphics are fine; it's also something new we don't see here :P There were also plenty of fun little things scattered throughout the show that were engaging. There was the camerawork with the human boat in the beginning swaying from side to side, then the prop boat during the first chorus with swiping left/right, then one of the performers "swimming" across the floor on what I assume was a skateboard, the sea/water LED environment, and even the lighting which kinda resembled Minecraft world border markers. It was paced pretty well, too.
Róa's staging is more focused on worldbuilding than narrative storytelling - which is perfectly fine of course, since like I said, this is more of a song to be felt rather than anything else. The different scenes from lighthouses to erupting volcanoes to fighting the sea life to the horizon, the dancers being there more to add to the vibe and the energy rather than to tell a story (at least, that's how it feels to me). Which is fine. It's good, still.
Oh, here's an additional point in their favour: Instead of pulling out gratuitous fireworks during the bridge, they actually used "steam" (not sure if it actually is steam). Given that the background at that moment was red and the entire theme is water-based, it felt like quite a smart move. Also, my brain went straight to hydrothermal vents lol
Outfit-wise, all that silver makes them a little hard to see against the usually blue background, but it's fine, I guess.
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VÆBS - 90%
Great. *Mic drop*
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