The Portuguese Final was held on March 10th at the RTP TV Studios in Lisbon, hosted by Pedro Granger & Sílvia Alberto. The winner, chosen by 20 regional juries and televoting was “Vida Mihna” sung by Filipa Soaza.
The entry is unfortunately typical Portuguese ballad/fado fare, much like any ballad they have sent to Eurovision for the past 40 years. Co-composed by Andrej Babic, the write of many ex-Yugoslavian entries as well as “Senhora do mar” and this sounds exactly like that. The chorus does save it somewhat but the whole thing takes a little bit too long to get going. The tune is very dark but the performance is too generic and needs some working on. The song has a very slow Tango-esque feel and in fact I feel the song might benefit for something dramatic like that on the stage.
Filipa, who is a lovely red dress, is flanked by 5 backing singers all in black. As the song progresses the role of the backing singers becomes secondary and by the end I got the feeling that having 5 was unnecessary - especially as they don’t really do that much singing and nobody moves about at all. A lot of work will have to go into the performance of this as what they have right now is not really good enough.
Of course, this is no winner and if I had my way, if would stay firmly in the back of the semi-final.
Here is her reprise of the song at the end of the programme...
SONG – Vida Minha (My Life)
ARTIST – Filipa Sousa
COMPOSERS – Andrej Babić, Carlos Coelho
LANGUAGE – Portuguese
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