SAN MARINO

The San Marino entry was revealed on March 9th at a press conference held at the Grand Hotel Intercontinental in Paris. Back in January it was announced that SMTV has internally selected Turkish singer Serhat to represent the principality. The song he is singing is called “I didn’t know”

This is a gentle ballad with a slightly strange chorus setup. It starts with a slow Mediterranean-style guitar before going into the first verse. Serhat’s style of ‘singing’ is highly individual – it is extremely gravely and low and you have to listen very hard to understand what he is saying. The chorus, although odd, does stand out. It has groups of 3 lines, rather than the normal 4 and each line goes down a note rather than the usual up. However it has an interesting flow to it and has a lot of scope for repetition. The ending is quite sudden and very anti-climactic.

Serhat is a well known TV and music personality back in his homeland of Turkey. With his TV company , End Productions, he headed a Turkish version of “Jeopardy!” and a game based on Connect 4. For these, he won numerous hosting awards. He has also fronted his own chat show and produced numerous song and dance contests. He has released a number of songs, his first released back in 1997.  His most successful being “Je M’adore” which was number 1 on the Deutsche DJ Black/Pop Charts, and made the top 10 in the British, French and Swiss Dance Charts.

This was another video presentation however the video is very pointed in its story and look so one much wonder if this look will be transferred to the Eurovision stage. Part of me thinks that the publicity this got (San Marino was trending on twitter in the UK due to people talking about this entry on the day it was released) that even if the video is odd, they would be silly not to cash in on this and keep the style. He is definitely making a very bold statement with the strange head strap and detachable monocle... Serhat’s accent and vocal performance cannot be much worse than what is on this record. I think the broadcaster is hoping that the Turkish diaspora, who don’t have an entry in this year’s Eurovision, will vote for this instead. This will get points, but not from the jury. If this qualifies - there may well be a riot!

ARTIST – Serhat

SONG –  I didn’t know

MUSIC – Olcayto Ahmet Tugsuz

LYRICS – Nektarios Tyrakis