Review: Ester Peony - On A Sunday - Romania
1 Day YouTube Views: 56,388
1 Day YouTube Likes: 3,624
After last year's dated entry by The Humans, Romania return with On A Sunday by Ester Peony whose win at Selectia Nationala 2019 was subject to much controversy - the juries effectively overruled the televote which had placed Ester in 8th place out of 12.
As for the song itself, I'll lay my cards on the table - I think this song is fab - on a personal level. A great blues beat with the guitar providing a hint of country. It's one of the few songs that engaged me from the first listen - probably because of my bias towards blues tracks. However, listening to this song, I can't help but feel the songwriters missed a number of open goals which drag it down considerably.
One of the issues is the lazy overuse of the 'Ey-Ey-Ey' sound, it's heard repeatedly throughout the song, would it have been so hard to come up with an appropriate lyric instead? In a similar vein, the final 30 seconds suggest some laziness on the part of the songwriters where Ester simply wails. Too much of this song is just noises rather than words and it really does cheapen the entire experience. The final issue I have with "On A Sunday" is that it takes too long to switch up, the "Wake me up..." lyric around 2:20 into the song was where the song should have stepped up a gear, instead it's more of the same.
This brings me to the topic of how appropriate the song is for the Eurovision audience and I can't help feeling that once again, Romania will be shown an early door from the competition. While this song is great for a steamy close dance in a dimly-lit room, it isn't going to translate on the Eurovision stage nearly as well. It has an air of "Crazy" by Franka last year for Croatia who crashed out in their semi in 17th place out of 19.
So setting aside my personal bias, I have to conclude that this will be a no-qualifier. Romania's YouTube stats are once again rather poor, languishing near the bottom of the table on both Views and Likes. A similar situation with Ester's social media statistics which don't display any significant momentum. No qualifier for me, purely on the basis of Eurovision appropriateness.
Will Ester be holding the Eurovision trophy on a Sunday? Let us know what you think in the comments below.
Review: Tamara Todevska - Proud - North Macedonia
1 Day YouTube Views: 264,760
1 Day YouTube Likes: 9,351
The former FYR Macedonia has returned as North Macedonia, bringing their 2019 Eurovision entry, Proud by Tamara Todevska. A social-justice inspired power ballad aimed primarily at female empowerment but could easily be adopted by any minority group. Like many songs this year, it has an epic feel which builds as the song progresses.
While all in favour of empowerment, there is so much media, be it songs or movies not-so-subtly telling women to be proud and that they're beautiful, that as an outsider looking in, it actually feels rather patronising - achieving the opposite effect. I wonder how women who ARE perfectly secure in themselves feel living in a world that assumes they require constant validation - or the effect on women who might otherwise be perfectly happy had they not lived in a world that assumed they weren't. So for me at least, the message is diluted in the sea of similar messages.
All this may be academic anyway seeing as most of Europe won't understand the lyrics. Europe will be listening to the song and in that regard, Tamara delivers one of the best vocal performances of this year's crop, particularly the final third. I'm a big fan of the 'elevator-pitch'-ness of a Eurovision song, it needs to capture and hold your attention within the first 30 seconds, you don't want your song to be the one in which the audience nips to the loo. This is the weak-point of Proud, the song starts very slowly indeed, it doesn't really get into its stride until around 50 seconds in. There's also a 20 second instrumental section in the middle which, while adding emotion to the song, I feel saps the momentum a little too.
It's much harder to project emotion down the TV than it is to project fun. The worst thing that could happen for North Macedonia would be to be sandwiched between two upbeat numbers, sending it down the memory-hole. The North Macedonian delegation need to focus on having staging that matches and compliments the emotion of the song. If Tamara is able to give a vocal performance anything close to that of the music video, she should score highly with the juries.
North Macedonia's YouTube stats for the music video have been among the highest compared to others, particularly in Views where it rivals Switzerland and Sweden. They sing in the second-half of the competitive second semi-final too where places to qualify will be scarce. I think it will come down to the running order to make an educated guess as to whether or not they'll qualify. While the song did grow on me after a few listens, Tamara will only have one shot on the night - even so, there's no way this would be anyone's go-to Eurovision song from the selection so I lean toward no-qualify for now.
Will Tamara be singing with pride in the finals? Let us know what you think in the comments below.
Review: Anna Odobescu - Stay - Moldova
1 Day YouTube Views: 43,958
1 Day YouTube Likes: 1,740
On the back of two top-10 finishes in the past two years, Moldova brings us Stay sung by Anna Odobescu. A classic power ballad reminiscent of any Celine Dion song you can think of. What's clear is that unlike years past, Moldova won't be troubling the left-hand side of the results table come the day of the final. Despite that though, I feel I'm a lone voice in thinking this track is actually quite enjoyable.
Perhaps I'm simply showing my age, and of course solo-female power ballads with the final key change are ten-a-penny in Eurovision, but I found "Stay" to hold decent potential. The lyrics and melodic structure are simple as can be and the chorus is easily something that the Eurovision stadium audience can get involved in with gusto. Anna has shown herself to be a competent singer and I'm sure she'll deliver a decent recreation of the track live in May.
Moldova do also have form when it comes to mediocre songs, I poo-pooed last year's entry by DoReDos as fairly cheap pop, but they absolutely smashed it with an inventive staging concept that elevated the entire performance. While Anna and her power ballad will almost certainly not get the same level of treatment due to the nature of the song, it'd be interesting to see if the Moldovan delegation come up with something to differentiate it from other tracks.
To make the task more difficult, Moldova perform in the first half of their semi-final, a semi-final that includes Russia, Sweden, Switzerland and The Netherlands, all of whom have strong stats across multiple platforms. With that in mind, it's looking like a very big ask indeed to get Moldova past their semi - as such, despite quite liking it, I'll have to put Moldova's 2019 entry down as a no-qualifier. The YouTube stats back this up, among the lowest views and likes on the 1 day stats of any track yet released.
Should Moldova "Stay" past the semi-finals? Let us know what you think in the comments below.
Review: Lake Malawi - Friend Of A Friend - Czech Republic
1 Day YouTube Views: 61,378
1 Day YouTube Likes: 3,882
With last year's entry featuring a handsome, skinny-jeans wearing so-n-so, the Czech Republic have decided to stick to the same formula by sending another in the form of Lake Malawi. However, while it's clear that both this and last year's entry are fishing from the same youth-vote pond - 2019's entry in Friend Of A Friend doesn't hit the mark nearly as well as "Lie To Me" did.
The music video wastes no time in telling us what kind of audience they're targeting - most of the song takes place over an Instagram photo feed. However, the song itself doesn't really sound like anything that kids are listening to (to my knowledge) - Friend Of A Friend reminds me a little of Benjamin Ingrosso's "Dance You Off" in that it sounds like something you might hear playing in the background of an upmarket London bar. Not cool enough to be mainstream, not lame enough to be irrelevant.
The song suffers from a litany of flaws that I feel will hamper it in front of the Eurovision audience, the first being how long the song takes to get off the ground. It opens slow with the "Can you hear it?" segment, teases you with a beat before going right back to being slow with some awful and unnecessary Arctic Monkeys-eque British accent "She was my neighbour..." segment. With such a slow start to the track, Lake Malawi will vocally be doing next-to-nothing for the first 40 seconds in front of a Eurovision audience that are ready and waiting to party. It might not be so bad if the chorus really raised it up with a catchy hook but the "She's only a friend of a friend of a friend..." line just doesn't seem to hit the spot - made worse by the synth section directly after following the exact same melody.
It's a frustrating song to review because with a bit of a revamp to the track, this really could be a funky earworm. However, without a strong hook and a slightly repetitive melody the song doesn't seem to go anywhere and you end up feel a degree of relief when it's finally over. I don't see Europe falling in love with this song and the majority of the social media noise coming from the usual demographical suspects for handsome young men.
Given that the music video has planted its flag on a novel Instagram concept, I can imagine they're going to try and jazz up the performance with an interesting staging concept. There's no way it'll just be the band playing with nothing going on around them. I see the Czech Republic's entry just about qualifying and it'll be interesting to see how the staging boosts or hinders their chances. The Czech Republic's official music video has dismal stats, on par with those of the horrific Montenegro. In terms of Twitter and Instagram followers, Lake Malawi certainly isn't making waves either. I'm looking at the Czech Republic as a 9th - 11th place finisher in its semi.
What do you think? Should we be more of a friend to Lake Malawi, or just stay as friends of a friend? Let us know in the comments below.
Review: D Mol - Heaven - Montenegro
1 Day YouTube Views: 73,251
1 Day YouTube Likes: 3,163
Not qualifying past the semi-finals since 2015, Montenegro return in 2019 with D Mol singing Heaven, a horrendously dated and highly repetitive song suggesting a renewed determination to maintain the tradition of not qualifying.
Montenegro's approximation of Rebecca Black opens the song and sets the tone for what's to come. Very generic lyrics, overtly emotional gesticulation to the camera and a low-quality, straight-to-DVD Disney movie vibe. The references to heaven and the white outfits later in the video make it come across as bad Christian pop which is really saying something. As a song, it's safe to say that Heaven does not require 6 singers to perform it and could probably just as easily have two or three instead.
Let's try to make this a little more positive - to it's credit, the song has shown the viewers Montenegro's ethnic background by introducing an old folklore instrument that nobody has heard of before - and for me, display of ethnic heritage is always something to be celebrated at Eurovision. While the song is horrendously repetitive, it's that very quality that gets it stuck in your head - being memorable in a field of 17 is always better than being forgettable. Most Eurovision viewers are not native English speakers either so the simplistic structure of the song may work in their favour there too. Can anyone say the chorus isn't permanently burned into your brain after the first listen? Yes, we are clutching at straws here.
In reality though, while the above points may give this song a tiny step-up, it's clear that Heaven is a no-qualifier. It's simply too low quality, there are too many people on stage and the song doesn't give you anything you hadn't already received in the first 30 seconds. The YouTube stats for the official video compare unfavourably to the stats for other Eurovision songs and the betting markets currently have Montenegro with a 0.1% chance of winning Eurovision as well as a highly unlikely chance of qualifying from their semi. Despite this group theoretically appealing more to the younger crowd, Montenegro's social media pages aren't gathering new followers at anywhere near the rate of other countries either. Maybe next year, Montenegro.
What do you think? Have we been too harsh? Do D Mol deserve a shot at qualification? Let us know in the comments below.