The Belarussian final was held on December 26th at the 600
Metrov, Minsk ,
hosted by Olga Ryzhikova and Denis Dudinskiy. Before the final, there was
an auditions process, broadcast online which reduced the field to 15. The song
to be sung in Vienna
will be "Time" performed by the duo Uzari & Maimuna.
BRTC had an open selection process, as they have had in most
recent years. The scoring system in the final was similar to previous years as
1/8 of the score was from televoting whist the other 7 jurors have 1/8 each.
Although Muzzart won the televote, they barely got any votes from the jury. At
least the Belarussians are transparently opaque! The production and sound values
on the webcast sounded awful and so songs that sounded bad may not have been
quite as bad as we thought! For this reason, I've also added the audition film
below too.
The song starts off as a piano led ballad but grows and
grows into something more up-tempo and punchier. The chorus as the main selling
point here, or at least should be. The song in itself is written really well
with lots of highlights, and a very earworm-y chorus but what it gains in tune
it lacks in production values. The violin solo 2 minutes in needs more work as
it doesn't work in the performance as it was on the night and the ending is a little
odd.
Uzari has quite an intriguing voice and an engaging
personality - you certainly feel like he is really pulling you into the song. His
voice really suits the song and I quite like the way he can't quite reach the
high note in the chorus. Maimuna comes into view just before the first chorus
as the music starts to change. She is a very attractive young lady but really
doesn't do very much. They interact quite well although at times it looks a bit
placed and forced and unnatural. Maybe one they know what the stage will be
like they can work something much more stunning and visual. i find this quite
odd as their audition performance showed better chemistry than the one in the
national final.... Also the clock motifs
on the back drop and on screen really worked and I liked the gold cogs-like necklace motif on Uzari's
neckline!
This has a lot of potential. Hopefully somebody will make
the chemistry between the two much more believable by better use of the staging and much
cleaner camera work. As I've already said, quite a bit of work needs to be done
on the production value of the backing track. I think if they can get this
sorted they will have a really good entry. Adding extra backing singers might
beef up the power of the chorus but I do hope not too many dancers are involved
- these two are enough!
I am really surprised by this entry and I actually think
this is a decent song full stop, never mind a song for Eurovision. If they sort
out the production problems and make these two really connect they could be on
for a really good placing. This is possibly my favourite Belarus entry ever - but that's not saying much !
ARTIST - Uzari & Maimuna
SONG - Time
MUSIC - Yuri Navrotsky, Svetlana Geraskova
LYRICS - Yuri Navrotsky, Svetlana Geraskova