Thursday 18 March 2021

GREECE 2021

The Greek song was released on March 10th with its video premiering on the official Eurovision youtube account. Last year's Greek representative, Stefania, was selected again, and her song was once again selected internally. The song she will sing is called "Last dance"

At the start Stefamia is on a street wearing a plain top, light coloured trousers and trainers. She runs to the top of a building and jumps off only to be saved by landing on the back of a Pegasus. She is then taken to a strange land where she meets and embodiment of Atlas who is holding up the heavens. As she touches his face the column he is holding lights up, starts spouting water and the statues around her turn to life. Stefania herself is now wearing a black sequined top and a silver skirt. This then turns into aTron-esque silver as the song she too is made of light. However we then realise that she's still on the street looking at a traffic control and it has all been a dream...

The song starts off slow with a long verse and long prechorus however the pace picks up in the chorus proper. From here is has a very 80s/Flashdance feel and very much in the ilk of some of the retro sounds in the charts. The chorus has very few lyrics which are repeated a lot but also feels rather short especially as there is so much oh-oh-oh-ing after it too. the second verse this time is up-tempo but is followed by a shortened pre-chorus which brings in a short break before getting back up to speed. Then comes a short bridge before an even shorter chorus. The song ends on a rather shouty "Let's Dance" which might come across a bit too much when live.

Although representing Greece, Stefania is actually from The Netherlands, however her parents are originally from the Evros region of Greece. Despite being one of the youngest contestants, she is very experienced on the stage. in 2013 she took part in The Voice Kids in Holland and then joined a famous children's' choir. In 2016 she performed at Junior Eurovision for The Netherlands as part of the girl band Kisses and came 8th. She then started a solo career which included some publicity in Greece and recently she has broadened her horizons having acted in a couple of Dutch TV shows and movies.

The problem that this song has is that there are a) some many female up-tempo numbers and b) so many 80s tunes that it just feels like one of many. I'd say this possibly feels a bit more 'retro' than some of the other female led bangers that with the right styling this might come across more authentic than others. The other issue is that the song structure focuses too much on the build up at the start that the end of the song feels like a bit of a mad rush. Without sounding too stereotypical, the song itself doesn't seem very Greek, which many of their entries have done. Why the pre-chorus at the start had to be 4 lines long, I don't get. Shortening it would allow for a proper full chorus at the end AND would get away with the over used fire/wire rhyme. I much prefer this to "Supergirl" which was a little underwhelming. However its chances of standing out don't look good considering the similar competition already on the menu. I think it's chance really will depend on how well she can actually belt this out.


ARTIST - Stefania
SONG - Last dance
WRITING CREDITS - Diverno, Dimitris Kontopoulos, Pavlos Manolis, Anastasios Rammos, Gabriel Russell, Sharon Vaughn


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