SAN MARINO

The San Marinese Final WAS held on March 3rd at the JOJ TV Studios in Bratislava, hosted by Nick Earles and Kristin Stein. Initially, there was An open call for singers who could apply by uploading a clip of them singing to the 1 in 360 website. This was then whittled down to a cast list of 10 who were designated 2 songs each. The singers performed an acoustic version of a song in each semi-final and after the 2nd semi-final the jury selected 1 song for each singer. In the final, the winner was chosen by a 50/50 jury/public vote – this portion was based on the amount of money received via the Global Rockstar crowdfunding platform. Going to Lisbon will be Jessika feat. Jenifer Brening with the song “Who we are”.

The staging of this song was very simple, mainly because the stage for the show was very simple. No real backdrop or lighting apart from a geometric lighting rig behind them and a simple raised box stage. Jessika is wearing a very flattering white low cut trouser suite whist Jenifer is in black jacket and skirt. Not very much happens on stage.

Jessika begins singing doing some quite neat and small bits of choreography through the first verse and chorus which doesn’t sound too far away from “Heroes”. It is at this point Jenifer moves in and does her neat bit of rap. It first it feels a little bit strange but in the whole flow of the song it works quite well. This then goes into another chorus before a short break and then the final chorus which is a little more freeform. By the end of the song you can tell that Jessika’s voice is a little tired and is really having to push to get the high notes.

This wasn’t really seen as a bit favourite beforehand and was a bit of a shock to win but I can see why this did well. The main body of the song is quite strong and Jessika performs it reasonably well. Jenifer’s rap punctuations keep the flow quite well and are just the right amount of length without taking over. The whole thing as a song works really well but the whole setting of the song is so far away from the stage at Eurovision. There is a lot of potential for this entry too and I guess it could be interesting to see what kind of stage show they can some up with or if anything can be done to revamp the song a little. Jessika is from Malta and Jenifer from Germany and the microstate is surrounded by Italy – all three countries are voting in their semi as this so I sure this will guarantee some points but possibly not enough to qualify.

ARTIST –  Jessika feat. Jenifer Brening

SONG –  Who we are

MUSIC - Mathias Strasser, Zoë Straub, Christof Straub, Lorenzo Salvatori

LYRICS - Mathias Strasser, Zoë Straub, Christof Straub, Stefan Moessle, Jenifer Brening