22/03/12 SAN MARINO

It is a good job I didn’t do a review first time around – I just knew in my water that the first song just wasn’t going to cut the mustard!

On the 16th March  Valentina Monetta revealed the song she would be sending to Baku “Facebook uh oh oh” composed by Timothy Touchstone, Jose Juan Santana and Eurovision stalwart Ralph Siegel. However, the next day the song had been disqualified. The Reference Group of the Eurovision Song Contest evaluated the San Marino entry and concluded that the entry was in breach of rule 1.2.2.g of the contest.

"The lyrics and/or performance of the songs shall not bring the Shows, the ESC as such or the EBU into disrepute. No lyrics, speeches, gestures of a political or similar nature shall be permitted during the ESC. No swearing or other unacceptable language shall be allowed in the lyrics or in the performances of the songs. No commercial messages of any kind shall be allowed. A breach of this rule may result in disqualification." 1.2.2.g of the Rules of the 2012 Eurovision Song Contest.

You can see and hear the song for yourself...

 

The country was giving an extension to their change the lyrics of the song OR to find a completely new song.

On the 22^nd of March San Marino TV revealed Valentina’s new entry. The song is now renamed “The social network song” and has very slightly changed lyrics from the original version.

The song is either downright awful or genius.

It has a very infections chorus and has some very predictable rhymes but this makes is strangely memorable. Some will see this as being quite cynical others will see it as being topical and relevant. The video is also very clever (as well as cheap) and does it’s job quite well. On a performance point of view this gives us little idea about if Valentina can perofm this live OR what it will look like on the stage.

All I can say about thus is that San Marino may well be the smallest country in Eurovision but bloody hell do they know how to create a publicity stunt. There is no was in hell that this was an accident. On first hearing I actually even wrote on esctoday.com  that they would have to change the lyrics. This said, I actually really like this song and I think with a light hearted performance it will go down in Eurovision history- although it already has !!!

SONG - The social network song

ARTIST - Valentina Monetta

COMPOSERS - Timothy Touchstone, Jose Juan Santana, Ralph Siegel

LANGUAGE - English