Hello again,
As mentioned in the January post which presaged the relaunch of That Music List, watching and writing about the Eurovision Song Contest was at least one thing I continued to keep on top of, albeit those thoughts were mostly shared just among Facebook friends and visitors of the lounge of one largely sports (and by extension sports betting) oriented forum.
As such, more of you will have missed the 2024 review below at the time than saw it. Pretty much all of the words I committed to print at the time I stand by. See what you agree or disagree with. See how many songs you can actually remember!
J xx
Semi-Final #1
CYPRUS
SILIA KAPSIS - Liar
Bounces along at a fair rattle, but seems to take a fair bit of time to get to a relatively expendable chorus. Inoffensive, and that’s not the best thing to be in this contest.
SERBIA
TEYA DORA - Ramonda
Have the translation service of your choice on during this, for some of the most desolate lyrics you’ll come across at this or indeed any Eurovision. Not a drumbeat of any great heft to be had until 30 seconds from the end, either… and then, almost too late, a quiet note of hope. Crumbling, desperate beauty with a muted, monochrome staging to match, and if nowhere near as challenging a piece as Konstrakta’s healthcare-themed avant pop of 2022 still a second highly engaging Serbian entry in three years.
LITHUANIA
SILVESTER BELT - Luktelk
A fairly straightforward electronic pop pounder done few favours by its staging, the constant darts between bright monochrome and pitch dark often rendering invisible young master Belt (the first son of Conveyor and Chastity, presumably). In truth, his underpowered, claggy delivery was already well on the way to doing that anyway. We Are The Winners by LT United is still the highest finishing Lithuania entry of all time, you know.
IRELAND
BAMBIE THUG - Doomsday Blue
Already upsetting the right people at home; defiantly, militantly transgender- and enby-friendly, and about as far removed from Dana as an Irish Eurovision entry could possibly be. So polarising a piece of work, I suspect, that substantive progress in the contest is not a given, and there are perhaps too many not wholly compatible things going on in three minutes. Nevertheless, this ancient sod quite likes the echoes of Lard’s Jello Biafra-fronted cover of They’re Coming To Take Me Away in those crunchy verses (even if Bambie might have been aiming for something closer to Marilyn Manson).
UKRAINE
ALYONA ALYONA & JERRY HEIL - Teresa & Maria
One of those instances where the parameters within which Eurovision songs must operate in the contest proper does a track a disservice. Go online and find the four and half minute version replete with the choir backing and a looped unaccompanied vocal opening (occupying the territory between Laurie Anderson’s O Superman and Mindmachine by Deine Lakaien), both cut on grounds of brevity and permitted on-stage personnel. Without them, this still pristine paean to hope and unification extends Ukraine’s recent run of arresting entries yet further; with them, it’s compelling.
POLAND
LUNA - The Tower
Inoffensive pop done well appears to be Poland’s vehicle of choice at the moment, the bouncy Solo of last year succeeded by this account of self-realisation with verses delivered in a light, tiddly early 1980s-apeing synthpop style. Won’t win but ought not tank either.
CROATIA
BABY LASAGNA - Rim Tim Tagi Dim
Soooooo… after the monster success of Cha Cha Cha last year, where is the party metal song with a memorable title going to come from? Ah, here we are. In essence Dick Whittington, but with the cat left at home, and an attempt at social comment that will resonate in territories other than just Croatia (specifically: the brain drain of talent from home. I could be back in Saddleworth!). Again, because I’m ancient, on listening to this I find myself wanting to call this one Rim-Tim-Tagi-Dim-bus-stop-F'tang-F'tang-Olé-Biscuitbarrel #iykyk.
ICELAND
HERA BJÖRK - Scared of Heights
How this actually won the national qualifier is a mystery to some in Iceland and decidedly fishy to others. Hera made the grand final in 2010. This insipid number, little better than aeroplane boarding tannoy music, won’t take her back there. So soon after those double helpings of Daði Freyr and the engaging female alt.country trio, Iceland have lost their way badly as a Eurovision contender.
SLOVENIA
RAIVEN - Veronika
Far removed from last year's Maroon5alikes Joker Out; instead, the story of an early C15th countess tried and murdered for witchcraft, sung by Raiven whilst wearing little more than a few leaves. As with Ukraine, however, this isn't the only track which exists in a superior form outwith the contest, namely a genuinely taking vocal solo with piano accompaniment as opposed to the apparently favoured not-as-dark-as-they-think-it-is electropop. A pity.
FINLAND
WINDOWS95MAN - No Rules!
Guildo Horn (charismatically silly). Stefan Raab (the genius of smuggling a very specific regional German dialect into a multinational contest). LT United (grown, suited men doing a hubristic playground taunt). Alf Poier (thumbing his nose at Eurovision's excess, a performer with the disposition of a buzzsaw). All Eurovision novelty songs which worked. No Rules!, alas, fails in much the same way as Jendrik's I Don't Feel Hate did for Germany in 2021, the message of positivity delivered in a less infantile manner, perhaps, but still lost amid the "I'm mad, me!" props and antics. The disgraced electroclash performer Har Mar Superstar had better underpants, too.
MOLDOVA
NATALIA BARBU - In the Middle
Per the advice in Måns and Petra's peerless Love Love Peace Peace, Moldova have brought violins. They've also brought a nondescript clatter of a track which landed the National Final, despite Natalia's performance being all over the shop - by turns flat, thin or screechy. Technically substandard vocal deliveries were punished by voters last year (Greece and Denmark especially); they will be again.
AZERBAIJAN
FAHREE ft ILKIN DOVTALOV - Özünlə apar
Does the whole self-discovery thing with an admirable degree of restraint and calm absent in some of the other tracks attempting similar this year, and the blending in of Ilkin Dovlatov's mugham vocals doesn't feel at all contrived or forced. Very much more sympathetic, effective use of strings than the preceding contestant also.
AUSTRALIA
ELECTRIC FIELDS - One Milkali (One Blood)
Nothing Australia nominated this year was ever going to work its way into my affections as much as Voyager ultimately did in 2023, but I still think I might just have found my second favourite Australia synthpop duo (The Presets have long been home for all money). A first appearance in Eurovision of the Aboriginal language Yankunytjatjara, and it wouldn't shock were the flamboyant Zaachariaha Fielding to prove a breakout star of the contest.
PORTUGAL
IOLANDA - Grito
A graduate of the songwriting degree at the University of Sussex, it turns out. Whether on account of that grounding or (hopefully) in spite of it, Grito is an underwhelmingly rote piece of work, right down to the money note being reached for exactly when you'd expect. Can we have the wonky subtlety of Maro back, please?
LUXEMBOURG
TALI - Fighter
Holly Valance's 2002 hit reading of Tarkan Tevetoğlu's Kiss Kiss cast a long shadow over Eurovision, with countless (mostly pale) facsimiles entered up for some years after. Having had just the 31 years to take a good long look at what wins a Eurovision Song Contest nowadays, Luxembourg has decided a confused hybrid of a Kiss Kiss revival and the French chanteuse/diva formula is the way to go. They might be in for a shock.
SWEDEN
MARCUS & MARTINUS - Unforgettable
As co-written by "Joker" Thörnfeldt, one of the team behind the second coming of Loreen last year. Rumbling, insistent, with more than an echo of Salva Mea by Faithless (the hit remix version rather than the original) and a dark, Tron/Matrix-styled staging which works in a way Lithuania's simply doesn't, this is precision tooled not to fail.
UNITED KINGDOM
OLLY ALEXANDER - Dizzy
Dizzy doesn't feel like any less calculated a track than Unforgettable, the nods to It's A Sin the track absolutely unmissable and Olly Alexander already familiar up to a point in a few Eurovision territories (in particular Benelux and Greece) from overseas distribution of It's A Sin the television drama. Nice key changes and fills aside, however, this still has more of the feel of a comfy game of spot the influence rather than a tournament winner; and whilst some of the Sam Ryder-derived momentum lost by Mae Muller's tentative performance last year may be regained, a chance of better has gone begging. In the self same week that the actual Pet Shop Boys have landed their highest charting album since Very in 1993, it's hard not to wish that Neil and Chris had been enlisted to write Olly something more compelling.
GERMANY
ISAAK - Always on the Run
Comparatively unfancied in Germany's national contest, Isaak ultimately just outpointed Max Mutzke, whose eighth place finish in Eurovision 2004 has only been bettered by Germany twice since. No pressure, then. He growls, he emotes, the midtempo plod plods along at a mid tempo, and a continent shrugs. It's not the worst thing Germany has submitted in the past five years, albeit the bar of comparison has been set extraordinarily low.
Semi-Final #2
MALTA
SARAH BONNICI - Loop
For anyone who missed SloMo, Chanel's third-place finisher in 2022 for Spain, here it is again, reheated in the microwave and with a Malta sticker slapped on the packaging. The tune's largely the same, if perhaps a tad more lumbering. The choreography's largely the same, the lifts especially. Its Wikipedia entry lists as many as ten people who've had a hand in the songwriting. It's all very calculated, but set to be torpedoed by Sarah Bonnici's thinning, increasingly breathless voice, if the performance in the Maltese national final is any guide.
ALBANIA
BESA - Titan
Sadly there just aren't enough songs written about makes of Leyland double-decker buses, and despite the title this one isn't either. Continuing a theme of the first semifinal, this I-will-survive number exists in a superior form, the Albanian language original that comes closer to Besa's description of the song as "a ballad with a lot of contrast". Whatever the motivations were for reinventing it as a Beyonce or Christina facsimile in English, it's hard to conclude the new version represents an upgrade.
GREECE
MARINA SATTI - Zari
Energetic but not overly frenetic, a big-hearted and open-armed exploration of Greek cultures old and new, if one that loses a little something without the promo video.
SWITZERLAND
NEMO - The Code
"Somewhere between the Os and ones, that's where I found my kingdom come". From the falsetto stabs to the swooping chorus via the slick rap which doesn't outstay its welcome, this dramatic, restless, inventive relating of a nonbinary awakening is closer to what I'd like Olly Alexander to have been given to work with. Nemo does a splendid version of this to a solo piano accompaniment, too. Another potential breakout star of the contest, methinks.
CZECHIA
AIKO - Pedestal
Defiant, rocky, sweary and with its Olivia Rodrigo influences worn proudly. A fun little track when done properly in its recorded incarnation, but file it as another whose performance in the Contest proper needs to be an awful lot more polished than in the more forgiving environment of the national final, throughout which Aiko largely forewent singing for shouting.
AUSTRIA
KALEEN - We Will Rave
Call me an old sod (you'd not be wrong), but dropping "rave" into the title of a track does confer a certain expectation of late-1980s/early-1990s styling, nosebleed synths, Roland Alpha Junos and TR-909s, and so on. We Will Rave sort of gets there, though in sounding in part like Maximum Overdrive by 2 Unlimited it's more Eurodance than hardcore dance. In truth, there's almost too much of a song here for the comparison to land completely. Meanwhile, it's interesting to observe that Self Esteem's outfit from the Prioritise Pleasure cover, minus the hat, appears to have been leased for the contest.
DENMARK
SABA - Sand
A striking performer with - as a bipolar, adopted, black queer woman - quite the life story already. In Sand she's been gifted potentially one of the most anthemic choruses of the whole contest, and it has to be hoped that the failure to do it (or the verses she rather mumbled through) any greater justice in the national final was as much down to the issues with her playback earpieces as it appeared.
ARMENIA
LADANIVA - Jako
For pure, unalloyed, unadulterated joy, this is the tops. Yes, a criticism of the societal norms imposed upon girls that carry into adulthood, but set to an irresistible Balkan-Latin American hybrid, trumpet, uke and all.
LATVIA
DONS - Hollow
A vocal Trojan Horse, being a stadium-slaying voice contained within a Danbert Nobacon clone. As with Armenia's entry, the conferring of expectation weighs heavily in the narrative. Unlike Jako, it's proving a welter burden. For all of my flippancy, one of the better ballads this time round.
SAN MARINO
MEGARA - 11:11
As not selected for Spain in 2022 or 2023, and instead finding a country in San Marino with recent previous for borrowing acts from elsewhere in the world, let alone continent. Anything was going to be an upgrade on Piqued Jacks' knuckle-dragging abomination of last year, and whilst Megara aren't as genre-shredding as their own publicity would have you believe, this entirely serviceable alternative metal is elevated by the flamenco break, electronic swishes and the black and pink outfits.
GEORGIA
NUTSA BUZALADZE - Firefighter
That's this year's lyrics and imagery about fire taken care of, then - cross it off your bingo cards accordingly. You have to go back to 2016 for the last time Georgia qualified for the grand final, and there have been more intriguing candidates to try than this in the interim. A pity, as Nutsa's resume reads as if she could quite happily have taken on a more challenging track had one been offered.
BELGIUM
MUSTII - Before the Party's Over
A meditation on tempus fugit, carpe diem and other things less easily summarised in Latin phrases. Before The Party's Over broods effectively on its journey to a big finish, which for all that it's Musti repeating the title eight times works in a way that other similar conceits elsewhere in the contest simply don't. A commanding presence in gold head and body paint amid a press conference-style semicircle of microphones, this performer's confidence and comfort in his own skin just pours out of him. This ought to prove popular.
ESTONIA
5MIINUST AND PUULUUP - (Nendest) narkootikumidest ei tea me (küll) midagi
Those of us who still lament Estonia's failure to send the dark humour and costumed thrash of Winny Puuh to the 2013 contest might just enjoy this. Different musically, yes, being a collaboration between a hip-hop four-piece and an alt.folk duo, but possessed of a similar mordant wit and punk attitude. There's a livelier intellect at play than that shits and giggles song title might imply - no Because I Got High by Afroman, this - as well as social comment on the police's disproportionate suspicions of the poor as drug offenders. The whole thing pounds along very pleasingly indeed, too.
ISRAEL
EDEN GOLAN - Hurricane
Criticised back home for acquiescing to EBU instructions to modify the content and rhetoric (real or imagined) in the original lyric, to the point of being dismissed now as "a meaningful anthem reduced to just another song", though some interpretations are still possible in its current form. Criticised here for being identikit present-day Eurovision balladry largely bereft of invention or surprise. It's hard not to think back to 2002, when Israel's participation in the contest was also the subject of murmurings and disquiet against the backdrop of the Second Intifada (Operation Defensive Shield having concluded only three weeks before the contest). The simple ballad Light A Candle, imbued with no great political significance beyond a universal expression of hope, garnered Israel a respectable twelfth. Something comparable might have made for a wiser choice of entry this time around, on either or both political and artistic grounds.
NORWAY
GÅTE - Ulveham
San Marino's most obvious competitor for the RAWK!!! vote, and for all of that one's swagger this is the more beguiling of the two tracks. More than a little proggy, yet with none of the more indulgent and negative qualities which that term can connote; well grounded in its parent country's folklore and balladry; and in truth that bit harder rocking than Megara. It's the closest thing this year has to offer to Voyager, like whom Gåte have been around since 1999.
NETHERLANDS
JOOST KLEIN - Europapa
I'm immediately reminded of my time of living in Germany in 1995-6, when the Dutch duo Charlie Lownoise & Mental Theo were among the many Eurodance/happy hardcore/gabber acts gaining commercial traction there. Whilst Joost Klein was born too late in 1997 for that period to have influenced him at the time, here he presides over what is a more faithful pastiche of CL&MT - and for that matter Scooter (who are called to mind in Europapa's brief shouty intro), Marusha, Technohead, etc. - than the Austrian entry is of the rave genre it chooses to namecheck. All that's really missing are a few extra bpm. The touching end might just have you in bits, however.
FRANCE
SLIMANE - Mon amour
Soooooo… if the tried and trusted return to a chanteuse didn't work last year, what next? The 2016 winner of France's version of The Voice, evidently. A pretty stock, come-back-to-me-I-love-you lyric and a delivery recalling Jon Secada or a reedier, slightly adenoidal Seal doesn't scream winner.
ITALY
ANGELINA MANGO - La noia
Debate will always rage as to whether a Song Contest entry should see commercial release outwith its own country in the weeks prior to the contest itself, and La Noia has already gone top 40 in four of the countries in a position to vote for it come finals night. Not that this sparky amalgam of pop and cumbia is going to need much help, anyway. Like, say, Cyprus, this takes its own sweet time to get to the chorus. Unlike Cyprus, however, the journey there has some nice touches and the swirling, minor-key chorus itself is sufficiently memorable. I'm reminded of the quote from Andy McCluskey of OMD, whose tremendous Bauhaus Staircase album of last year was the result of "rediscover[ing] the creative power of total bloody boredom". Unlike that album, La Noia was not created in the grip of lockdown, but the motivating power of boredom was, by all accounts, quite the same. So, er, yay boredom!
SPAIN
NEBULOSSA - Zorra
Paloma Blanca's otherwise intriguing introduction to New Flamenco last year was shorn of significant impact (and therefore votes) by an underpowered vocal performance. Twelve months on similar concerns abound with Mery Bas, for all that the Miami Vice synths and drum machines aren't so pounding and heavy as to obfuscate everything around them. Depending on your point of view, Zorra is either a semantics student's delight, being an exploration of the misogyny inherent in the Spanish language (in particular the contradiction of "zorra" being an insult whilst "zorro" is heroic) set to a tasty backing; or else it's a piece of degenerate filth containing nine "sluts" and 37 "bitches" that Mediawatch-UK is no longer around to save you from.
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