MOLDOVA

The Moldovan Final wasbe held on March 16th at the TRM TV Studios in Chisinau, hosted by Catalin Josan & Evelina Virlan. Before the final there were 2 semi-finals where the 24 was reduced to 14. The winner was chosen by a 50/50 televoting and jury vote. The winning song was "A million" sung by Aliona Moon.
However , straight after her vitcory it was announced that she will be singing the Romanian version of the song in Malmo, with the title "O mie" - a thousand.

Aliona is centre stage with a pianist to her left and three backing dancers dressed in gold hoodies behind her. The motif on the video screens is that of stars and planets which works well as the stage really needs to be as dark as possible.

This performance is all about the dress. The top of the dress is made of circles of metal, almost like a huge necklace attached to the dress. Taking inspiration from Sabina's dress from Baku, this dress turns a multitude of colours and ends like a huge bonfire. The weight of all of this has also had an effect on her hair which seems to have been magnetised the side of her head.

As I have stated, the song will be sung in Romanian but in the national final she sang in English. Aliona performs the song really well but does have to strain a little to get the high notes near the end. There is a clip of the recorded version of this but not live version as yet. The song has a lot of parts to it, in particular a very interesting chorus. However I feel that the change of language is not a good one. Although the new version has that Italian language quality to it I feel that the story behind the song will be lost.

I like the background of this show and I hope it is kept for Malmo. I think that the dancers are superfluous and only cause distraction when the main focus should be on her. This is yet another ballad to add to the list and in a semi final filled with ballads I am not sure how well this one will stand out. If it were not for the dress, it would not stand out at all. I personally neither like or dislike the song which makes me fear that people won't have a reason to vote for it.

Artist - Aliona Moon

Song - Crisalide (Chrysalis)
Music - Pasha Parfeny
Lyrics - Yuliana Scutaru