Eurovisionfiasko 2011 – part one

It’s time to start talking about Eurovision. I’ve been putting it off for a while, mainly because I’m festivaled out after all the contests, and mainly because most of this year’s crop of songs is crap. But nevertheless, it’s what we’ve got, so we’ll have to persevere.

Like I’ve said before, I personally think it’s quite difficult to give accurate criticism of a song in any contest by judging it solely on the studio version. They’ve been worked on, cleaned up and made pretty for the audience, whereas a live performance gives less scope for hiding poor vocals, dancing and so on.

So, with that said, and the official album on the turntable, here are my first, brief, impressions about the first lot of non-Nordic entries in this year’s Eurovision Song Contest. I’m going to look at the Nordic songs in more detail later on. For more comprehensive Eurovision analysis than I can muster, I recommend my dear friends Ken and Ronny at Schlagerprofilerna and Tobbe at Tobson In Euroland.

Poland – Magdalena Tul, Jestem
(lyrics and music: Magdalena Tul)
Nice Eurovision pop, reminds me a lot of Kejsi Tola’s Carry Me In Your Dreams. A bit meandering, really needs a bit of punch. No key change. Big mistake.
5 points

Albania – Aurela Gaçe, Feel The Passion
(lyrics: Sokol Marsi, music: Shpetim Saraci)
Aurela’s pinched the Eurovision tagline! But she’s done it well, so it’s fine. Starts off with folky tones, quickly goes into rock territory. The segue is OK though, not too clunky (unlike other entries this year). I think this might get a bit lost, sadly. She’s channelling Grace Jones in the video, which might scare a few people.
6 points

Armenia – Emmy, Boom-Boom
(lyrics: Sosi Khanikyan, music: Hayk Harutyunyan, Hayk Hovhannisyan)
Wow, how to through a song away in one easy chorus.
2 points for having decent verses

Turkey – Yüksek Sadakat, Live It Up
(lyrics: Ergün Arsal, music: Kutlu Özmakinaci)
Rock. With no apparent chorus *presses skip*.
1 point

Serbia – Nina, Caroban
(lyrics and music: Kristina Kovač)
It’s Motown for Serbia this year. Which is fine. It sounds a bit strange being sung in Serbian, but that’s only because of my linguistic ignorance of the language. Nina’s vocals are great, and it’s a lovely, uplifting song. Great key change.
8 points

Russia – Alexey Vorobyov, Get You
(lyrics and music: Alexey Vorobjov, RedOne, AJ Junior, Bilal ”The Chef”, Eric Sanicola)
It’s a RedOne track with plenty of Swedish influence in the writing. His management is also Swedish. So why isn’t this song better? Chorus is great. Verses let it down in a major way. Eric Saade wouldn’t touch this. So, so, so disappointing.
6 points

Switzerland – Anna Rossinelli, In Love For A While
(lyrics and music: David Klein)
SWITZERLAND IN DECENT SONG SHOCKER! This is a slow banjo ballad with a great singer in Anna – I imagine this is how Lena Meyer-Landrut would sound like if she dropped the monkey. This deserves to go through to the final, but it’ll struggle, which is a real shame.
8 points

Georgia – Eldrine, One More Day
(lyrics: DJ Rock, Mikheil Chelidze, music: DJ BE$$)
Evanesence called from 2004, they want their demo back. This will get a few points.
But only 4 from me.

Up next: Malta, San Marino, Croatia, Hungary, Portugal, Lithuania, Azerbaijan and Greece.