Review: Eleni Foureira - Fuego - Cyprus

TellyStats Rating:

7 Day YouTube Views: 213,065
7 Day YouTube Likes: 6,930

Returning to the competition, Cyprus deliver Fuego, another upbeat dance track to compete with the likes of Finland and Australia.

A Cypriot approximation of Shakira/Beyonce, Eleni swaggers, pouts and shakes her hips through a decidedly low quality dance track, Cyprus seem to be one of the 'fandom picks' this year and in my opinion the fandom have made a poor choice - I wonder what they feel the USP is here. It's difficult to judge the quality of Eleni's voice because the official video has auto-tune cranked to the max (and then some). However I found that the song quickly grated on me, particularly the "A-yeah-yeah yeah-yeah" hook, not only because it isn't a pleasant noise but also because it displays a real lack of imagination on the part of the songwriters, couple this with the auto-tune and you have a recipe for a cruddy song.

Unusually, the chorus has very little singing (except the odd "Fuegooo"), these music breaks will presumably be used for dancing when this track is performed live. If the scantily clad Eleni of the video is anything to go by, the type of dancing we're likely to see will lean towards the "something for the dads" demographic. There aren't many overtly sexual acts this year so Cyprus will at least be remembered over the course of the evening - I felt it further cheapened an already pretty cheap song. The re-listenability of the song is very low for me. Cyprus has a decent diaspora working it's favour but out of Cyprus, Finland and Australia, this is definitely the worst of the three.

Cyprus received about 80% more YouTube Views than Finland in it's first-week of video upload, Likes were also higher by about the same amount. Cyprus are 17th in the betting markets and they'll be closing the show at the first semi-final. It's hard to oppose the idea that they'll progress on the basis that they landed that final slot in the running order - an early slot would have surely sunk them. Critically, Finland perform their song not long before Cyprus, it'll be interesting to see how each country's voting performance is affected by the other. Beyond that, this song has poor jury-appeal, I question it's televoteability and I don't see Cyprus making any kind of mark in the final should they get that far.