Review: Lake Malawi - Friend Of A Friend - Czech Republic

TellyStats Rating:

1 Day YouTube Views: 61,378
1 Day YouTube Likes: 3,882

With last year's entry featuring a handsome, skinny-jeans wearing so-n-so, the Czech Republic have decided to stick to the same formula by sending another in the form of Lake Malawi. However, while it's clear that both this and last year's entry are fishing from the same youth-vote pond - 2019's entry in Friend Of A Friend doesn't hit the mark nearly as well as "Lie To Me" did.

The music video wastes no time in telling us what kind of audience they're targeting - most of the song takes place over an Instagram photo feed. However, the song itself doesn't really sound like anything that kids are listening to (to my knowledge) - Friend Of A Friend reminds me a little of Benjamin Ingrosso's "Dance You Off" in that it sounds like something you might hear playing in the background of an upmarket London bar. Not cool enough to be mainstream, not lame enough to be irrelevant.

The song suffers from a litany of flaws that I feel will hamper it in front of the Eurovision audience, the first being how long the song takes to get off the ground. It opens slow with the "Can you hear it?" segment, teases you with a beat before going right back to being slow with some awful and unnecessary Arctic Monkeys-eque British accent "She was my neighbour..." segment. With such a slow start to the track, Lake Malawi will vocally be doing next-to-nothing for the first 40 seconds in front of a Eurovision audience that are ready and waiting to party. It might not be so bad if the chorus really raised it up with a catchy hook but the "She's only a friend of a friend of a friend..." line just doesn't seem to hit the spot - made worse by the synth section directly after following the exact same melody.

It's a frustrating song to review because with a bit of a revamp to the track, this really could be a funky earworm. However, without a strong hook and a slightly repetitive melody the song doesn't seem to go anywhere and you end up feel a degree of relief when it's finally over. I don't see Europe falling in love with this song and the majority of the social media noise coming from the usual demographical suspects for handsome young men.

Given that the music video has planted its flag on a novel Instagram concept, I can imagine they're going to try and jazz up the performance with an interesting staging concept. There's no way it'll just be the band playing with nothing going on around them. I see the Czech Republic's entry just about qualifying and it'll be interesting to see how the staging boosts or hinders their chances. The Czech Republic's official music video has dismal stats, on par with those of the horrific Montenegro. In terms of Twitter and Instagram followers, Lake Malawi certainly isn't making waves either. I'm looking at the Czech Republic as a 9th - 11th place finisher in its semi.

What do you think? Should we be more of a friend to Lake Malawi, or just stay as friends of a friend? Let us know in the comments below.