ARMENIA

The Armenian Final was held on March 5th and the winning song was chosen by a 50/50 mixture of televoting and an "expert" jury. Back in December, Emmy was revealed to be the singer of the song in Dusseldorf. The national final was supposed to be early February, but was moved back to allow more time for songs. The pre-selection was postponed again after Emmy’s after died suddenly.

The show starts with a solo performance by Armenia’s winning entry of the Junior Eurovision Song Contest, Vladimir Arzumanyan

Emmy is then introduced to the crowd with enthusiasm from the crowd. She is wearing a nice black dress with oversized shoulder parts which have printed on them the Eurovision 2011 logo – nice touch! She then does a draw to see in which order the 4 selected songs will be sing tonight.

HI – This is an ethnic dance pop song. She seems to be constantly singing during the song. (although in this case I should say mime) The chorus is quite catchy although the structure of the whole song is a little confusing. The most redeeming factor of the song is the call and response part in the middle. Not a bad song, but I doubt if she could sing this live.

BOOM BOOM – Another ethnic dance song, with a slightly Spanish type feel to it. The verses of the song sound very familiar, but the chorus of this song is far too cheesy. Emmy seems to be moving around the stage much more comfortable to this song. Again, she is miming but I feel that this song would be much easier to sing live.

AYO – This is a more dramatic song. It starts off quite slow then the beat kicks in. The backing track feels much more electronic than the previous two. The chorus is again very simplistic and not very memorable. There is a heavy reliance on backing singers too for this song.

GOODBYE – This is the only ballad of the night. The song has a slight blue feel to it. The chorus is well constructed and is at least memorable after just one listen. As she is once again miming it is not clear how much strength and push she really has to get the high notes in the middle part. I get the feeling from the selection though that a up tempo song wants to be chosen.

I am actually quite disappointed in the selection process this year as very little effort seems to have been taken with the visuals of the songs (no dancers or backing singers) and that all the songs this year have been mimed. Either they have total confidence in Emmy’s ability – or they have none…

The phone lines are no open for 15 minutes.
In the mean time we are treated to some performances by previous Armenian Eurovision participants – Andre, Sirusho and Hayko – all performing recently released material.

The wining song is revealed to be …Boom Boom !

SINGER – Emmy
SONG – Boom Boom
MUSIC – Hayk Harutyunyan, Hayk Hovhannisyan
WORDS – Sosi Khanikyan