Review: Cesar Sampson - Nobody But You - Austria

TellyStats Rating:

7 Day YouTube Views: 429,848
7 Day YouTube Likes: 9,646

Austria return this year with a soulful track entitled Nobody But You. A decidedly formulaic pop song sung by a fairly formulaic looking and sounding singer, Cesar Sampson.

This is by far the hardest review to write simply because while the song isn't bad, you almost have to wonder why they bothered, did Austria really feel that against 42 other entries this would stand above the rest? Surely not. It's sounds like a track released by a "The Voice" contestant that'd reach Number 15 in the charts for a week and then disappear the next. It doesn't push anything forward and switch things up, it's not unique, it doesn't have a message, it doesn't excite - it falls right into anybody's expectations of a wholly generic pop song.

Cesar is a competent singer, the song comes together as you would expect but it feels like a plain cheese sandwich, nothing wrong with that - but where's the flavour? Where's the meat? Where's the sauce? I find myself wanting much more from this track but once the tone is set it plods along at such a pace to make it impossible to switch it up a gear. There are plenty of songs this year that for better or worse will grab the viewer's attention and this is not one of them.

For reasons I struggle to comprehend, this track is considered by the betting markets to have the 15th best chance of winning this year's Eurovision Song Contest - perhaps an indication of the quality of the songs this time around. I personally wouldn't even feel confident in this track progressing past it's semi, though aside from the big-hitters in Semi 1, there are some real duffers too so it may slip through on the basis that the competition is so bad, rather than it's own merits. It seems though that I'm in the minority with this opinion, Cesar's YouTube stats are strong, beating out Italy, Greece and even France which is 8th in the running. Damned if I understand it, if this was the UK's entry it would surely be considered an uninspiring and weak entry...