Tarkan returns...depending on your position on the globe and your interest in the artist, he is back since either eight, five or two years. His last international success was in 1999/2000 with his world wide hit song Simarik, and world music award winning album "Tarkan". In Turkey, his last Turkish album Dudu was released in 2004, and in Germany, his not-too-succesful-but-not-a-complete-flop-either Come Closer briefly rocked the charts in 2006 with Bounce and Start the Fire.
Metamorfoz signals a change from all that. However, when speaking of image, every album could have been called Metamorfoz, because Tarkan changes hair style and clothes like other people change their underwear, and has had only his green eyes as constant.
No, this change is more fundamental: Metamorfoz offers a new way of combining eastern and western pop music. It is a disco album purely. It has groovy beats, strong melodies and strong lyrics (translations in English will be made available soon by the fanclub, tarkaninternational).
The album was an immediate success in Turkey, as it sold over 350,000 copies in the last two weeks of December. Due to excessive interest for the video, the artist's website was temporarily shut down within 24 hours after the video was released there.
The lyrics to the songs have been valued as very poetic, and Tarkan received official praises from the Turkish Language Association, for incorporating long forgotten idioms in his lyrics.
Given the huge popularity of this album in his home land, the signs are well for Tarkan that it may raise international attention, too. Metamorfoz constitutes of ten songs which are mostly up tempo. Despite its disco atmosphere, and 'computerized' sound, the album booklet reveals the presence of a string orchestra and acoustic guitar on some of the songs. Melodically, the songs are just as catchy as earlier Tarkan songs which made him so succesful.
The image that comes with the album - a man dressed in a classic suit, alone in a wheat field with a stormy background - may take away the attention from the fact that the metamorphosis is all about change in music, not so much in looks. Yet the booklet offers some interesting features, like wind turbines, stormy apocalyptic pictures, and braille imprinting that reads TARKAN- METAMORFOZ.
The video for Vay Anam Vay is another technological masterpiece, as most of it was shot before a green screen and the background is a computer animation.
All in all, Metamorfoz is a strong album that sticks out of the crowd. Unfortunately it has only ten songs, which makes me hit the repeat button over and over again.