BELARUS

The Belarussian Final was held at BTRC Studio 600 in Minsk on January 10th, hosted by Olga Ryzhikova & Denis Dudinskiy. The winner was chosen by televoting (50%) and an "expert" jury (50%). As there was a tie at the end of the voting between Max Lorens & Didyulya (who won the televote) and Teo (who won the jury vote) The "expert" jury had to vote again for the winner, voting unanimously for Teo and his song "Cheesecake".

I didn't intend to watch the Belarusian final but I found myself home alone because the husband was having a late night at work and so I kind of fell into it! I felt that the show was a bit oddball. The visual enthusiasm of the crowd (i.e. ZILCH) didn't seem to match with the aural enthusiasm of the crowd (i.e. FRENZIED) I will give BTRC its due and came up with a very slick show. The stage was a decent size and the screen at the back accommodated all of the settings. also the introductions were slick and all the entries were covered in a quite a short amount of time.

I can't really tell you if Teo is a great singer or not because this is not really a song to show off vocal talents. The verses are quite slow and speed up slightly in the chorus. There are no ups and downs, crescendos or diminuendos its all very samey.  It is a very wordy song at times and this does point out some of his off pronunciations e.g. "I don't want to be your trippy hamster today" Off the bat he announces "I'm not Patrick Swayze, you're not Jennifer Gray" This is not Booker Prize winning writing...

The staging of the show is very simple. Teo is backed by 3 singers dressed smartly with braces and hats however they don't do very much apart from holding up song-related paddles - last seen in "Leto Svet". Teo's dancing however leaves a lot to be desired. I can hear Len Goodman harking on about 'pigeon toes' and 'sickled ankles'. Teo also has a look of Robin Thicke about him (the shirt the suit, the spiky hair, the dead slugs on his face). I don't think this is coincidence and certainly don't think it does him ANY favours at all.

However this is Belarus. Within 5 days of his win, it was put in jeopardy.

The quite disgruntled 'runners up'  Max Lorens & Didyulya called for the results to be annulled. They are protesting on the fact that the final result, with the jury choosing between the tied entries, took no opinions of the televote into account (They got about  3000 votes more than Teo) and there fore it was rigged. The duo are hoping to appeal to the Belarussian president in order to reverse the result through the signing of a petition. Also they have announced that they would hold a concert under the slogan “For Fair Voting,” As I type, nothing has changed this result but one never knows!

How do I rate the chances of this song - I really don't know. I think it has some charm and some appeal, as well as being rather contemporary but it is NOT a Eurovision song. The subject of the song is sickly and cheesy (no pun intended there) Not even with some stage tweaking could this improve. Maybe the only way for this to improve is for it to be disqualified...

Artist - Teo
Song - Cheesecake
Music - Yuri Vaschuk (Teo)
Lyrics - Dmitry Novik