 He is followed 24/7 by the media, because he is one of the most famous young artist in Israel. Harel tells about his serious lyrics, his love life and the rumors that are spread about him by the media.
Half an hour before the show in Gan Shmuel, Harel Skaat is standing on the stage with a broom and sweeping it. For anyone that’s looking from the side it might look like another crazy act of a pop star, but the truth is that Harel is crazy about cleaning and that he cannot go on a stage that wasn’t cleaned and swept. His manager Galit Calderon says that this is nothing! She had already seen him cleaning much more difficult things and doing it thoroughly. At some of his first shows in the hall Noga, he even started washing the floor, eventually he stopped cause he saw that the washing wasn’t going as he wanted and lines were remaining. After 15 minutes of sweeping Skaat also admits that once every 2 weeks he even puts layers of potato oil on his car’s windscreen wipers. Later he has a hard time to decide what to wear for his show, between a t-shirt and a black sleeves shirt, and he returns to the stage only after he hears that over a thousand people are cheering to the most popular stage cleaning man in Gan Shmuel.
Lyrics: In A Big Room/ The Hurting Silence Is Worried/ The Walls, The Windows The White Sheets/ Demanded Me To Tell What I Know.. I Start Talking/ I Tell Everything/ Almost/ Burst Into A Laughter/ The Cry/ I Understand It’s the End/ The End Is Here/ Its Waiting/ Isn’t Hesitating/ So Pure/ I Dare/ Don’t Give Up/ Don’t Care If I Fall.
Admit it, you would all have never guessed that these are lyrics that Harel Skaat sings. Just few years ago he was singing in A Star Is Born, and he was known for songs that are lighter, easier.
Skaat says: “What’s the meaning no one would have guessed? What’s the meaning no one would have known? I have many songs that are very gloomy, about moments when we are alone, at night, when everything starts rising in the mind, especially during periods when we are depressed and ask ourselves questions about life, about our choices, you feel like you want to run away from it but the walls demand you to talk about it”.
Q: But eventually your singing songs that were written by others, so there is nothing new here with the image your trying to show?
A: I want to be a poet, everyone can write lyrics and publish it, but not everyone that writes lyrics is a poet, and not everyone that writes a scene is a writer. No one knows me as a lyric writer and I wanted to do it, so this is a stage I’m going through now. One of the reasons it didn’t appear on the first album was that the songs were very serious and I asked myself who would like to listen to this heavy stuff now? In the first album I have to prove myself, and it would have been wrong to go and release such serious and difficult songs. In the next album I will have more confidence with the success I had, I would have loved to live here 50 years ago and to sing only songs that were written by poets, but if I will come up today with an album that has only songs of poets I wont have any audience, so I have to compromise.
Skaat says: “I never felt that I’m part of the generation of the TV show A Star Is Born . I never felt that I represent the genre of Galgalatz. The comedy show on TV: A Different Country did a comic part about me being a part of Galgalatz and since everyone says that I’m part of the Galgalatz genre and type of music they like to play. There is nothing behind it. We are responsible for the culture of this generation and 20 years from now, we will be the people that will be spoken about so its annoying me to see that I’m shown in this way as something that’s not serious. Also in A Star Is Born at the beginning I felt that everyone together are friends and later I understood that its not like that at all. So I decided that I want to build myself my own reputation, and have success for when I will fail (in music) it wont hurt much.
Q: You will fail ?
A: Yes this glory will pass at one time, and I’m ready and waiting for it.
The fame I’ve reached so far is based on my youth, on my first success on TV, a breakthrough success, but this will go away and then the true test will come and I am ready and waiting to deal with it. I read an article with Shlomo Artzi and he said in it that at one point he didn’t want anymore to be just a ‘poster on the wall’, I understand that.
Q: But you can’t deny that your look plays a big part in your success?
A: I didn’t want to be a poster on the wall because I am handsome, and you said I am handsome. If I would think that I’m a beautiful creature I would look in the mirror and be delighted, I don’t look at myself and say wow! I’m not selling beauty and looks and I am not a model, I am selling art and music, beside that I don’t think that I am that handsome, really not.
Actually with things that relate to mirrors and his past image Skaat has a slight problem, as in his touring van that’s driven by his bodyguard Yaar, his personal manager Galit takes out 2 pictures of him from 2 years ago. Harel looks at it and tells her: “Burn it immediately!”. Galit continues teasing him and asks him if this is really how he looked like 2 years ago? He answers her a bit laughing and a bit angry saying: “Oh Galit, I would like to believe that those were actually my good times without being bugged”.
During these trips across the country they like to talk among themselves about many things and listen to Paul McCartney. Galit also says that Harel is a Pathological Liar! And Harel confirms it and, both Galit the driver and the background vocalists start bringing up some of the lies Harel has told them and they say that everything he says they take with caution and think about it twice before believing.
His background vocalist says that once he had convinced everyone that he was adopted as a child for 3 years by an Arab family in Gaza!
Then everyone in the van stop their talking and kidding and Harel starts talking serious again, he says that he feels that the newer generation in the music is really not good, he feels that the previous generations were much better and produced much better music. Then he adds that its not only about music also the family structure is fragile and breaking up nowadays, the art is all turning into commercialism, everything has become blurry in our society, and you ask yourself where is all this leading to? Something is happening here, not the destruction of the culture, but something wrong is going on.
Q: And aren’t you a part of it?
A: Why? Because I appear a lot in the gossip columns? Your talking to the wrong person, dude. I’m one of those people that are trying the most to return to the values of the past, I think in the music I make there is something really classical, something that reminds of Frank Sinatra, Edith Piaf, Mike Brant, I have amazing texts and lyrics! I don’t sing just about love-lovers and its over.
Q: So your kind of a singing-stars-over?
A: I’m very proud and happy at the place I am at and from where I came from. In the past singers came from Military Bands or radio shows, now singers come from shows like A Star Is Born, beside that I didn’t reach my status just as participating there, I had success there and I also took risks at that show, for example people tell me that I lost because I sang a more complicated song at the finals like Here I Am. That’s kind of a saying from me, it shows that I do take risks, that I am adventures and didn’t go on the safe side with a safe song, its part of my vision, I think if we will go back to the Zionism and patriotism we had here in the past the culture and music will support it and follow it. We have to see that there will be more brains and less commercialism, that people will use their heads.
Two weeks later, we reach the Forum Club in Beer Sheva, at the entrance we hear trance music. Skaat who isn’t yet 26 years old says that we have an entire world we should live and experience. I really feel like I would like to change my life style and become a fun having bachelor, go to parties have fun with girls at these clubs. I really think that its missing in my life right now, but on one side something in me says that this isn’t my style, not my style to have one night stands with girls, but another part of me says, how do you know that? Maybe it is my style and I’m sure its lots of fun, so maybe I should stop being to good all the time.
Q: So soon we will meet in a pick up bar?
A: Honestly, just few months ago I discovered that there is something like pick up bars here. I really think its crazy, I am curious to find out how it works, and I feel like going there and to pubs. Sometimes I feel that I am trying to be to good and I feel getting dirty, but I am afraid I will be disgusted from myself after that.
Q: So there is a chance you’ll be leaving a bar soon with two girls hanging on your arms?
A: Why 2? One girl isn’t enough? I didn’t think about it that I could leave with 2 girls, didn’t know about this phenomenon.
Q: You can really see yourself having casual sex with women in the toilets of these pubs?
A: I in a toilet of a pub? (Skaat starts laughing) Hey, you never know! These are things I will have to explore and find out, well I want to admit and tell you that there are things I’ve done and cant say and there are things I would do and experience if I wasn’t famous, things I am not even allowed to talk about because I am famous. I demand a lot from myself just to try and stay away from the gossip columns. I have an image to keep, so many times I end up staying in the house, but inside me sometimes I say to myself that I shouldn’t be burying myself here and I should go out and have a good time.
Q: Your talking a lot about women, girls, it’s the opposite of what people think about your sexual preferences.
A: Very nice, once someone will write that your sister is a prostitute, now you go and prove you don’t have a sister!
Q: All right, what about Love?
A: Once I fell in love really strong and I ended up with a broken heart, it was a long relationship of 8 months. I think there isn’t anything bigger then a broken heart, if you talk about experiences.
Q: I feel a paradox is coming?
A: There is something in a broken heart that doesn’t have anything more to lose, and that actually is the good part of it. I’m not going to tell who she was, but there is something in a broken heart that really makes you feel at the bottom that you don’t have anywhere more to fall too, that you don’t have anything more to lose.
Q: And that broke you?
A: Trust broke me, or to be accurate, lack of trust! Because of it I find it hard to trust people, I can trust people, at the base I believe that people are good, but I never trust in 100%, I have learned because of what happened that also 95% of trust is enough, and I am always ready for something to happen. My trust is like a hot water kettle, it doesn’t boil at 100 degrees but at 98 degrees Celsius and I am like that.
After being with him on the road for a month, it seems that the heating thermostat of Skaat isn’t working well. In his songs on the radio he presents an image of the prince of kitsch and pink love, but in life he has lots of doubts, especially everything regarding trust in the women which were with him, and what he understood from it about eternal love.
Skaat says: “I see people with problems in their relationships, there are also many people that get divorced. Maybe we are reaching a point where there isn’t a love that can last. Maybe I haven’t yet experienced what these people have experienced to understand them well but I have to admit that the pressure for getting married exists also in me. I know that there are people that say they are happy when they aren’t, and I don’t believe all of them.
Q: Your afraid you’ll end up not loving in 100%?
A: I really wish it wont happen, and that I will love completely, but I can feel it, I have the need and something inside me is pushing to build a family. I see babies and I feel like taking them home with me. Inside myself I am a total father, but I don’t know for sure if I am ready for it yet.
Q: So your crazy about having kids but not crazy about getting married?
A: I think about getting married from time to time, but I’m not sure if I believe in marriages, especially because of things I have seen, of marriages braking up, I don’t know, I don’t know what the problem is. Maybe it’s the institution of marriage, maybe because I’m still a bit young for a man to be married, maybe I am just afraid to grow up. Understand well, I am not against weddings, but I just have fears that it wont hold on for to many years. It doesn’t always matter if you love or not, I don’t want to feel that I am obliged to do it, although I do want too. Maybe right now I don’t believe and in one year from now I will totally believe in it, and maybe I just have to really fall in love to say that I do.
Reference:
Yediot Ahronot
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