Review: Kate Miller-Heidke - Zero Gravity - Australia

TellyStats Rating:

1 Day YouTube Views: 86,853
1 Day YouTube Likes: 4,256

Everybody's favourite European nation, Australia return in 2019 with classicly-trained singer Kate Miller-Heidke performing "Zero Gravity". 'Perform' really is the word to describe this, I feel that this song is as much, if not more, about the performance than the song itself.

Australia, as the newbies to the competition, have arguably received a helping hand from the Eurovision powers-that-be. Last year's entry by Jessica Mauboy received the lowest televote score of all nations, but a respectable mid-table jury score. My feeling with Australia this year though, is that they may have bitten off more than they can chew. "Zero Gravity" is really just all over the place, the beat doesn't match the pace of the vocals, there doesn't appear to be any consistency in the style of singing and the different sections of the song are difficult to discern.

There are a couple of reasons that Australia haven't been immediately thrown into the trash as it would had any other nation submitted this song. First - as mentioned above, it's Australia. Secondly, the staging is what really makes it. Kate is wearing a colossal oversized dress with some kind of ice-queen style upper-half. Behind her is an acrobat standing on a bendy pole contraption. Australia are relying almost entirely on the 'WTF' aspect of this to see it through.

Australia perform in the second-half of the first-semi which for most entrants would be a huge positive, however, crucially, they perform just before Iceland who are by far the most memorable act of the night. The 'WTF'-ness of Austraia is outranked by that of Iceland. This isn't to say that Australia don't qualify, they are still in contention but with far less merit than Iceland for example, the song is pretty rubbish.

Next to Russia, Australia has received the highest number of Dislikes to their music video, which is significant. Much of their mid-table YouTube views can likely be put down to the visual spectacle rather than the auditory one. While Kate's social media follower stats aren't too bad, she hasn't charted on the iTunes charts in any country and I think that's rather telling. Overall, I hope this entry doesn't qualify but we'll make a call on it's qualification chances later this week.

Let us know what you think in the comments below.