GEORGIA

The Georgian entry was presented on March 14th during GPB 1′s Good Morning TV Show. Back in February it was announced that The Shin and Mariko Ebralidze would be representing the nation in Copenhagen.
"Three minutes to earth" is the name of their song.

The song was not performed live but a video of the whole song was shown. Although this gives a good idea of the song, it does not however give us any idea about performance style, singing ability and audience reaction, which I will have to make a decent guess at.

The video clip itself is quite surreal. The band are in a very strange location, not sure if it is indoors or outdoors but are seemingly playing on grass. Around them are lots of people but all acting like mannequins as they play the song but move very slowly during the instrumental parts.

The song is a very odd one for Eurovision. Its structure is very unusually for the contest and may well be too unusual for most ears. The first minute is Georgian jazz scat sung by the band's drummer. This in itself is not so odd but starts to feel incongruous as the song progresses. Then Marika starts singing a more traditionally constructed song. She have a very unusual tone to her voice, which sometimes feels a little strained but it also makes her diction quite difficult to understand. The chorus on the song has a good rhythm but there isn't really much of a tune to the whole thing. The ending it also a little weak.

After my first listen to this song I was quite shocked - I really did think this was the most awful thing I had ever heard. This obviously has a lot of ethnic influences to it, which I don't mind but I don't think it is very accessible to those 'normal' people watching the contest although I feel song of the Caucasus regions may enjoy this more. As for possible its performance, I think there will be 6 of them on stage so there will be no scope for extra dancers or singers on the stage. I feel that the performance will be quite static but may depend on how active Marika can be while singing at the same time.

This sing is a grower. After 5-ish listens you get to understand the structure more but most Eurovision viewers will not have this luxury. I think the clashes of styles in the 3 minutes will alienate many voters and I don't think the jury will even find this worthy of votes. I predict an DNQ for this song but I do applaud them to giving us something different and true to their culture.

Artist - The Shin and Mariko Ebralidze

Song - Three minutes to Earth

Music - Zaza Miminoshvili

Lyrics - Eugen Eliu