Yo, listen up, here's a story about a little band that lives in a blue world...
Eiffel 65 are an Italo Disco/Eurodance/Europop band (whose first album is actually Trope Namer for Europop) from Italy consisting of three men: Jeffrey Jey (real name Gianfranco Randone), Maurizio "Mauri" Lobina (known as Apollo pre-Eiffel 65) and Gabriele "Gabry" Ponte. They are probably one of the most popular Eurodance bands out there, despite having only one song that everyone remembers — "Blue (Da Ba Dee)".
It started when Jey (previously singer for another Eurodance band, Bliss Team), Lobina and Ponte met each other at Bliss Corporation, a record label specializing in eurodance. With the help of a computer, which randomly picked one word from a given list, they settled on name Eiffel, but their producer accidentally scribbled number 65 on a label copy while writing down a phone number, and the three decided to roll with it.
They split up in 2005 to let Gabry focus on his solo carrer, and the other two members started a Spiritual Successor band called Bloom 06. The three finally reunited in 2010, and released their first post-reunion song, "Panico"/"Critical", in 2016. They later released the single "G Nel Body" with Alien Cut in 2021. They also competed in the 2023 edition of San Marino's Eurovision pre-selection show Una Voce per San Marino with the song "Movie Star", but ultimately did not win the ticket to the contest.
Eiffel 65's music and music videos provide examples of:
- Bizarre Alien Biology: The aliens from "Another Race" are implied to resemble humans. However, they have "one way brains" that make communication impossible. Depending on your interpretation of the lyrics, the alien might be able to "walk on air".
- Bizarre Alien Psychology: The titular aliens in "Another Race" have one way brains that make them impossible to understand. However, they somehow are capable of speech, though their speech is considered incoherent.
- Color Motif: "Blue (Da Ba Dee)"
- Crapsack World: One way to interpret "Blue (Da Ba Dee)" is that it is both literally and figuratively a man living in a blue (depressing) world filled with nothing but misery.
- Europop: The song of the same name is the Trope Namer.
- Heel–Face Turn:
- The aliens from "Blue (Da Be Dee)", namely Zorotl, are initially antagonists in the music video for the song.
- Likewise with the other aliens from "Move Your Body", who join Eiffel 65's concert as dancers.
- Love Triangle: Discussed in "Your Clown". The narrator's Love Interest has been having an affair with another person. However, he refuses to be part of a Love Triangle.
- Lyrical Dissonance:
- "Hyperlink (Deep Down)", the closing track to Europop. It's a really upbeat-sounding number...about cybersex.
- "Blue (Da Ba Dee)" again — it's a dark Melancholy Musical Number about a perpetually miserable ("blue") man living in a literally blue world populated by people as depressed ("blue") as he is set to a catchy beat.
- Planet of Hats: "Blue (Da Ba Dee)" is about a world where everything is the color blue and everyone is unhappy (the proverbial "blue").
- Rhyming with Itself: In "Move Your Body", the verse repeat the word "body" many times, but this word is rhymed on the entire chorus.
- Robosexual: One interpretation of "Silicon World", given the band's science-fiction theming.
- Shock and Awe: In "Blue (Da Ba Dee)", Maurizio was able to fry a blue alien with lightning.
- Shout-Out: "My Console" namedrops the Playstation as well as the games Metal Gear Solid, Tekken 3, Omega Boost, Resident Evil, Gran Turismo, Bloody Roar, The X-Files, Winning Eleven* , Ridge Racer and Oddworld.
- Spell My Name With An S:
- "Johnny GRAY" or "Johnny GREY"?
note - In some releases of the album Europop, the song "My Console" was misspelled as "My Consolle". It can be justified as the band is Italian and "consolle" is "console" in Italian.
- "Johnny GRAY" or "Johnny GREY"?
- TV Head Robot: The characters of the music video for "80s Stars" are jagged humanoids with TVs as heads depicting the faces of the band members.
- Virtual Celebrity: Zorotl, the blue alien seen in the videos for "Blue (Da Ba Dee)" and "Move Your Body", released his own single "I Wanna Be" in 2000 and nothing else, thus making "him" an One-Book Author. The promotional website is still up!
