Over the course of a decade, Estonian avant-garde rapper Tommy Cash has become one of pop music’s eminent tricksters. He’s gone viral for his peacocking front-row Fashion Week costumes, walked the runway with Rick Owens, collaborated with Maison Margiela, released sexually explicit music videos on PornHub, showcased his own sperm in an art exhibit, and netted a feature on Charli XCX’s critically acclaimed Pop 2 mixtape.
But this year, Cash, born Tomas Tammemets, is setting his sights on something a little more traditional than he’s used to: representing Estonia in the Eurovision Song Contest. Taking the stage in Basel, Switzerland, Cash will perform his song “Espresso Macchiato” in front of the entire continent of Europe (and Australia), vying for the chance to bring honor and recognition to himself and his home country.
“Espresso Macchiato” is both an ode to the uniting power of coffee and a cheesy, electro-swing track that features Cash’s alter ego, Tommaso, and some level-one Italian vocabulary. It’s also a deeply silly song that fits right in on the Eurovision stage — and in some ways, Cash, with his penchant for attention-grabbing stunts, is the perfect Eurovision contestant. During a recent episode of Switched on Pop, Cash spoke about the hit song and made a case for who should compete for the U.S.
Thank you for joining me today!
What’s up? Where are you calling from?
I’m calling from Los Angeles —
When is the USA gonna be on Eurovision? Because Australia is …
I feel like there’s an opportunity there.
Yeah, absolutely. It’s like the Olympics for singing and performing. I think America should be there. I would pick JoJo Siwa for this year. I think she would do very good.
That’s a good pick.
Strong artist.
She has the showmanship. She could really command a crowd.
She was born with Eurovision in her genes.
Talk to me a little bit about “Espresso Macchiato.” What’s the story of the song?
It’s a story to bring people together, you know? I wake up; you wake up. First thing we do: We drink coffee, right? If we meet up, what we gonna do? We’re gonna go for a coffee, you know? So basically, like, coffee brings us together; I hope that my song will bring us together too.
What was the sonic inspiration? Your catalogue is filled with a lot of high-energy dance music. There’s a lot of gabber and traditional Eurodance sounds. “Espresso Macchiato” is a little different for you.
The sonic inspiration was freedom. I had a trip to Capri. It’s this little Italian island; it’s very beautiful. And I came back, and we had this idea of “Espresso Macchiato” as a title. It just was born by itself. But the verse is weird. It’s this really bad style of jazz mixed with electronic music that no one uses. I was saying, “Let’s use this, because no one is using this sound.”
For me, it’s the year of trying things that Tommy hasn’t tried before. If you’ve been to my concerts, you know my catalogue, and it’s really scary to perform with a song like this because with a song like this, you are naked on the stage; you have no beat to hide behind. If you have gabber or Eurodance, you have this man-made energy pulsing behind you. It already works with the crowd automatically. It’s our heartbeat. It makes you move.
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I don’t know if I can call “Macchiato” a ballad or opera song, but it’s different. It’s kind of a battle with myself. It was scary because I’m not used to it. I’m used to having “Baba Yaga” or “UNTZ UNTZ” or “WINALOTO,” right? Already works, opens up the mosh pit. But this is when I’m naked — when it’s just my charisma, my aura, my stare. Me.
How do you expect a song like this to translate to the Eurovision stage, which celebrates a kind of maximalism?
Eurovision is hungry for new ideas and approaches. But I know sometimes you will need a few years to understand and be like, “Ah, actually, Pop 2 was such an amazing album,” but fuck, we just understand this only five years later.
Yeah.
This song speaks for itself because the pool of people who can listen to it are from 2 years old to 70 years old, and they are all connecting with it. So this is the magic of the song. It’s not getting a concrete demographic — it’s getting this wide palette of people who can find different things and vibe with the song.
How do you approach writing a song for Eurovision versus writing something for your own catalogue? Is there a different take that you have on songwriting?
Yes, we took some time to figure it out. The sessions of getting the verses right took us time. And the variety of people that watch Eurovision is different. I feel that I couldn’t do classic Tommy Cash, which is for a smaller group of people, but I would say “Macchiato” is for everyone, where everyone can have a coffee.
I appreciate when Eurovision songs have ties to the country they’re representing. Eurovision’s Estonian entry last year was one of my favorites, and they sang in Estonian. How do you think “Espresso Macchiato” represents the country specifically?
Well, it represents it because it is sung by the most Estonian artist of all the artists — the top of the tops, the top-tier, No. 1 Estonian artist in the world. I also like when Eurovision songs reflect their countries, but we’re way past that. The language being used in different songs are not their own languages; the actual musicians are not from the countries they represent. The competition is so international that what matters is the emotion. What happens onstage matters. It matters if you make them feel good or bad. If it works, it works. Doesn’t matter the language.
