In news that has come as an absolute shocker to Nancy Reagan’s immediate friends and family in 1983, a metal band has recently been accused of potential drug use. Yes, it seems that nowhere on our planet is safe from the scourge of someone having a totally awesome time with no harm to anyone else, not even during the afterparty of a victory at this year’s Eurovision Song Contest.
As we reported over the weekend, Italian metal band Måneskin, who claimed the top prize in the famed over-the-top celebration of musical excess in all forms (save, apparently, for the chemically-induced kind), found itself under investigation as a result of a video which showed lead singer Damiano David briefly bent over a table following the group’s victory for “Zitti E Buoni” (“Shut Up And Behave”), the implication being that he was taking drugs. David himself immediately refuted the charges (“No cocaine, please, do not say that,” he proclaimed, perhaps because there was a far cooler drug available) and offered to take a drug test to prove his innocence. Sky News reports the results of that test have come back negative, thereby confirming David’s position. To which The A.V. Club would like to make the following statement:
Who. Fucking. Cares.
If the winners of the Eurovision Song Contest aren’t even allowed to do drugs, we’re in bad shape as a society. Did they perhaps simultaneously win the gold medal in the 400-meter relay at the Olympics? Is that why this is an issue? Or maybe the band was busily passing anti-drug legislation in its home country of Italy during the winning performance in question, in which case the hypocrisy of their personal behavior might actually be relevant? No? In that case, no one should care in the slightest if every member of Måneskin dove headfirst into a Scrooge McDuck-like swimming pool full of cocaine prior to performing—or after, or even during. (How rad would it be to watch a metal band platform-dive into cocaine in the midst of a song? Very rad.) There is no correlation between drug use and achievement in a glorified Battle Of The Bands, no matter how much the musical output of Keith Richards might testify otherwise.
So while our official position might be discouraging the use of illegal substances (definitely for ethical reasons, not legal ones), the idea that a Eurovision participant’s drug use should be a consideration in any way, shape, or extremely cool metal-act form seems about as reasonable as the idea that people should be looking to Eurovision metal bands for their cues on morality. Though, given Damiano David’s upright behavior (and stellar sense of fashion, as demonstrated in the above photo), maybe that’s not the worst idea in the world.