Review: Darude feat. Sebastian Rejman - Look Away - Finland

TellyStats Rating:

1 Day YouTube Views: 83,937
1 Day YouTube Likes: 2,629

Bringing out the big guns, Finland have one of their best-known names to represent them this year, the man who launched a thousand memes. Darude is well known for his hit "Sandstorm" and he's partnered with Sebastian Rejman to perform "Look Away" at this year's Eurovision, so is it any good?

The answer...is difficult to say, "Look Away" is firmly in the mid-tier of the competition, definitely not among the trash like Georgia and Montenegro but nowhere near the top either. An EDM track (as you might expect) with Sebastian singing and Darude doing the typical nonsensical DJ poses, there is a political message in there but I feel it will be largely lost on the audience. "Look Away" has an air of the Polish 2018 entry which also sounded good but ultimately failed to qualify. It too had the DJ on-stage with the singer doing most of the work.

A staging concept has already been created which isn't bad, but hardly anything new. Sebastian also appears to have difficulty hitting notes in the lower register. The chorus has received some criticism for being repetitive and lacking lyrical complexity but then again, it's a dance track - and I believe it does succeed as a dance track.

I'm still on the fence as to whether or not Finland will qualify though, Finland sing early in the first-half of the first semi-final. They come on immediately after Montenegro so the Eurovision audience will definitely need a pick-me-up after that. However, Finland is then followed by Poland, Slovenia and the Czech Republic, all of these songs are vastly different from one another and as such, Finland lacks the ability to break any monotony and stand out.

In terms of stats, Finland has a significant disparity between the number of Views of it's YouTube video against the number of Likes it received which is a concern. The song has charted at No. 3 in Finland on the iTunes chart which is at least encouraging when you consider the likes of Portugal and Belgium couldn't reach the Top 40 in their home countries. We'll make a call on whether we think Finland will qualify after seeing the rehearsals but for now, keep your stakes low and look out for information.

Let us know what you think in the comments below.