SERBIA

The Serbian song was unveiled on 12^th March during a special show “Pesma Srbije za Evropu” hosted by Slobodan Šarenac, Vlada Jelić , Dejan Pantelić and Milan Popović. A few days earlier RTS revealed who their internally singer and song would be. Going to Stockholm is Sanja Vučić  - who will be using the stage name ZAA - singing the song “Goodbye”.

This is an odd little ditty and doesn’t sound very Serbian at all. It is a stylistic ballad with jazzy, 1960’s touches, almost Adele like in places. She is also styled a little like Amy Winehouse which suits the song – but not her. It’s a lovely touch to have her in front of an orchestra, this is a Eurovision song that needs the oomph that a orchtra gives rather than something synthesised. The whole song has a great structure and really suits the last minute key change. This is one of the few songs where both parts of the song work really well as do the instrumental parts.

Sanja Vučić has been singing since she was little, she attended a music school and studied in the opera department. She also sang in various ensembles, ranging from ethno music, a jazz orchestra and church choir. She then joined the band ZAA in 2012. The band is noted for its crossover appeal doing ska, dub, rock, jazz and punk. She performed on their "What About" album released in 2014.

Although this was presented on s special show this was a mimed video performance and it is quite obvious that many different takes were used to craft it. First of all she needs to sack the person who dressed her and the person who did her make up as she looks truly awful and over done. She looks more like a slightly drunk fortune teller. Her hair looks like she's just got out of bed,  the lipstick colour makes her look like a blow up doll and the dress makes her look a lot bigger than she actually is. She is obviously not backwards in coming forwards when if comes to performance style and you can tell she has a lot of attitude and passion for what she does. My concern is that it will be more attitude than singing. If she can sing this live AND tone down the visuals ever so slightly this could get a lot of votes. The juries will love this and I think the style of music will appeal to casual watchers. I would hope this will qualify from semi 2 with little fuss and I think this should be a top 10 finisher.

ARTIST – ZAA

SONG – Goodbye

MUSIC – Ivana Peters

LYRICS – Ivana Peters