29/02/12 BULGARIA

The Bulgarian Final was held on February 29th at the National Palace of Culture in Sofia, hosted by Milenita Nikolova, Drago Draganov & Alexander Sano. Before the final there was a semi-final where the list of 22 was whittled down to 12.  The winner was chosen by  SMS voting (50%) and "expert" jury (50%). However when the results came in there was a tie for first place between Sofi Marinova and New 5, therefore the SMS voting took precedence so Sofi took the ticket to Baku.

The song is an uptempo dance song. It starts off with a small ear worm or Sofi kind of yodelling which is repeated a few times during the song. The song is pretty formulaic and you can see where it is going quite easily. Most of the song is in Bulgarian so having a predictable melody isn’t such a bad thing. The chorus contains several different languages and it does come across as a little bit garbled. Also the chorus is sand at a very high pitch, almost to the point that every time she sings it you really fear that she isn’t going to hit those notes !

In both the semi and final, Sofi is on stage alone. She is able to command the stage quite well but I feel that the power of the song would benefit from some kind of extra presence on the stage. I also feel that giving her less to do will enable her to focus on her vocals, which as I have already stated need to be bang on during the chorus.

I would say that this kind of song will go down well with the Eastern European crowd with the language at that Romanian-style production values. I think this one will qualify and may do well with voters at home. I do feel that the song might benefit from a change of language at some point in the song.

Below are her performances from the final and semi-final

SONG - Love Unlimited

ARTIST – Sofi Marinova

COMPOSERS – Doni Vasileva,Yasen Kozev, Krum Georgiev

LANGUAGE – Bulgarian (plus a few words in various languages)