BELGIUM

The Belgian Final was held on January 17th at the AED Studios in Lint, hosted by Peter Van de Veire. The winner was chosen in two rounds of voting - in the first round the top 2 were selected through 50-50 televoting and international juries. IIn teh second round the winner would be selected by televoting alone. The winning entry was "What's the pressure" sung by Laura Tesoro.

The song is a dancey, uptempo song with obvious influences of "Uptown Funk" and Fleur East's "Sax". The song builds quite well after a very bass-y beginning and a very repetitive chorus. In some ways the tune of the whole piece is very predictable which makes is a great piece to listen to for the first few times but gets a little tiresome after that. That all said this no bad thing in Eurovision terms. If anything it is possibly a bit too commercial and radio friendly to be a Eurovision smash and many may see it as being a bit too close to other songs to ahve its own identity.

Laura, like many Eurovision contestants of late, was in a the local version of "The Voice", coming runner up. One would then hope that she can perform under he strain and keep her voice and performance level up. She has also known for her role in a Belgian soap opera so should be used to working with directors and camera angles (although not always to look into!) . She has a very young fresh look which also suits the song although I feel that her look, her dress sense and styling of the whole performance needs some reviewing before going to Sweden.

As I said the song is cashing in on the success of the songs it is influenced by and I see very little change happening in the production of the track. Laura's voice come through really well at the start of the song and she can sing the chorus really well. The issue with her voice comes during the middle bridge where she starts betting a bit tired and the strain starts to show. She needs to focus on the title of the song and make sure she doesn't burn out too quickly

Although I have some issues with her voice, I feel that this would be ironed out with some basic tweaks to the concept of the performance this could be irradiated. The week before the final, all 6 finalists unveiled their songs but not their 'full out' performance packages. For me, Laura's staging with the mic stand and chair looked so much better that the full out routine during the final. The backing dancer/singers were really in your face and just a bit too much - see Basim 2013. If they could intertwine the two performances, they could having something a little bit special. If they keep it as it was in the final I would doubt their chances of getting to the final.

ARTIST - Laura Tesoro
SONG - What's the pressure
MUSIC - Sanne Putseys, Louis Favre, Birsen Uçar
LYRICS - Sanne Putseys, Louis Favre, Birsen Uçar

This is the initial performance -