ARMENIA

The Armenian Final was held on March 2nd at the ARMTV TV Studios in Yerevan, hosted by Gohar Gasparyan & Avet Barseghyan. All songs were sing by Gor Sujyan. The winning song, chosen by televoting (50%) and an "expert" jury (50%), was "Lonely Planet"

Gor performed the song on a very small and simple stage backed by his band The Dorians. There are no special effects and no dancers. This ultimately means you have to focus on the song - which is not a bad thing. Also, I am quite interested to see how the performance will change when going to Malmo, as I feel there is a lot of scope for change and improvement. Gor has a very 'interesting' look and some work could be done on making his look more striking. Part of me thinks that the weird monobrow look might make him more memorable although it is a little scary!

 

The song is a rock influenced ballad. It starts off quite folky in the verses with just a guitar but then the chorus kicks in it really flies. Gor's voice is quite powerful and his pronunciation is very good. I feel though there could be more changes to the backing track to make it much clearer and exaggerate the soft and hard parts. The song itself is very well structured. The contrast of the verses and chorus works well and they intertwine and complement each other. The chords in the chorus really stand out. The ending is clever as it ends on a rocky note as well as a strong one for Gor. This song has also gained a lot of publicity as the composer of the song is the guitarist of Black Sabbath, Tommy Iommi, and you can really see this rock influence in the song.

I've been pleasantly surprised by this song and has really grown on me. The thing that really gets me about this song is that it is really memorable and there are lots of hooks in the song to recall. The song will also stand out from all of the ballads. I think this is an easy qualifier and a definite top 10.

Artist - Gor Sujyan

Song - Lonely planet
Music - Tommi Iommi
Lyrics - Vardan Zadoyan