AZERBAIJAN

The Azerbaijani entry was premiered on March 16th via the Eurovision.tv website. Earlier in March the singer Dilara Kazimova won the Böyük Səhnə selection show to be the participant. It was then announced that the selected song would be chosen at a later date. The song she will be singing is "Start a fire".

The video is a pre-recorded pop video rather than a live singing recording. During the Böyük Səhnə selection she showed some skill however that was with cover versions in Eurovision and non-Eurovision hits however this will was the first time she has been seen singing an original song for the contest.

The video is shot with 2 main themes. One is of sheet music and instruments, the other of night time views of a city and Dilara is present in both. Her miming doesn't seem to be very good and seems to have a wayward tongue! It certainly fits the mood of the song but isn't particularly entertaining or tell the story of the song. I find the close ups of here during the video a bit too close up!

The song is a modern piano ballad with folk instrumental elements. The lyrics of the song are really emotive and lyrical however the tune of the song, and Dilara's vocal style, doesn't always allow you to listen to the words carefully and get the true meaning of the song. It stays quite mellow and quiet until about 2 minutes when the orchestration kicks in and then subsides

The main obstacle to the this song is Dilara's voice and pronunciation. It seems like you only get to understand every other word. Her way of saying the letter 's' is quite odd and the last line of the chorus (apart from Start a fire) is almost unintelligible. There is also the notion that this is not a very Eurovision song. Obviously the video gives us very little idea of stage production but hopefully this will help get the meaning of the song to the viewer.

I don't know how well this will be received, especially after the voting debacle of last year. I also don't think this is a very televote friendly song but will get some song writing points from the juries. It may also get lost in the trickier of the two semi finals. This will qualify, even though it possibly shouldn't, and I have no idea how it will do in the final. I personally like the tune of the song but find it really hard to get into it.

Artist - Dilara Kazimova

Song - Start a fire

Music - Stefan Örn, Johan Kronlund, Alessandra Günthardt

Lyrics - Stefan Örn, Johan Kronlund, Alessandra Günthardt