Review: Eliot - Wake Up - Belgium

TellyStats Rating:

1 Day YouTube Views: 189,080
1 Day YouTube Likes: 7,209

Fighting with Lake Malawi for the young-male hearththrob singing an alternative song market, Belgium present Eliot for Eurovision 2019 singing "Wake Up". An unfortunate title really, and an unfortunate comparison. While "Friend Of A Friend" is instantly catchy and will bring you with it throughout - with a few exceptions, Wake Up will gently lull you to sleep.

"Wake Up" never really goes anywhere as a track, likely to be dismissed by the Eurovision audience as 'toilet' or 'cuppa' song. It's not edgy enough to be interesting and not emotionally charged enough to be relatable. The way the track progresses beyond he halfway point brought to my mind the image of a pendulum slowly swinging, it really was sending me to sleep. To add insult to injury, the song ends abruptly with no apparent attempt to close it off or raise it up in any way.

To compound the issue, concerns have been raised about Eliot's singing voice, I personally find his style rather irritating - and it's common among the likes of X-Factor-type contestants. It's "singing" in quotation marks, there is a tune, but there's no effort to flesh it out with a unique and rare talent. Sounds perhaps marginally better than what you'd hear from a local band in East London.

With all this in mind, it's beyond me why this track's YouTube stats are so strong, there is likely a reason but I don't believe it's because of the quality of the song itself. "Wake Up" appears towards the top of the tables in both Views and Likes in 24 hours. As might be expected from a handsome young man, his social media followers figures are relatively strong too.

Belgium perform in the weaker first semi-final, it's difficult to see audiences mustering much enthusiasm for this snoozefest but with such an absence of top-tier tracks in that semi, there is a possibility it could actually qualify. Very borderline but I'll say it qualifies by a whisker.

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