Review: Chingiz - Truth - Azerbaijan

TellyStats Rating:

1 Day YouTube Views: 204,894
1 Day YouTube Likes: 10,419

Azerbaijan are known to be competitive Eurovision entrants, a few brown envelopes to select jurors has stood them in good stead in the past. Saying that though, they had an 'off' year in 2018 when their entry ("Luna moon me up") by Aisel finished 11th in their semi, only just missed out on a place in the final - likely because of the unexpected success of Lithuania, Albania and Ireland. Azerbaijan don't appear to be taking so many chances this year, the song is "Truth", sung by Chingiz and it is, by any measure, a solid Eurovision track for 2019.

The song starts strong, you immediately 'get' it and start bopping your head to it. The beat starts heavy and gets heavier as the song builds to the "Shut up about it" chorus. You begin to visualise song on the Eurovision stage with powerful staging and you know it's just going to work. "Truth" isn't perfect, the song loses steam going into the second half, the bridge is uninspired and the chorus gets repetitive towards the end. I also think repeating the words "Shut up" to your listeners isn't exactly a nice thing to hear, though I suspect the Eurovision audience won't be quite so affected.

Azerbaijan sing in the tricky second semi-final, luckily though they're in the pimp slot singing last! This is a tactically advantageous place to be as recency bias in the audience almost always means that Azerbaijan will get an increased vote share. To be fair, not that "Truth" might not have qualified without the pimp slot - it is a good song.

"Truth"'s YouTube stats are among the strongest of all countries, as are Chingiz's social media follower stats. Chingiz himself is a good looking chap with decent stage presence, so there's no reason to think that the running order position has changed this track's fortunes.

There has been a little concern regarding the quality of Chingiz's voice but my view is that a song sung in this style should mean that most slip-ups can be concealed under the rest of the music. We'll see what Azerbaijan are planning in terms of staging, but on the basis of the song itself, I'd say a Top 10 finish is a possibility.

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