SLOVENIA

The Slovenian Final was held on February 27th at the RTVSLO TV Studios in Ljubljana, hosted by Klemen Slakonja. The expert jury selected the top 2 songs and the winning song was solely chosen by teletoving. The winning song was “Blue and red” sung by ManuElla.

The song is a country-pop number in the style of early Taylor Swift. With a title like Blue and Red you can imagine that this gives you some clues to the styling and lighting of the piece. The use of some black and white shots is quite eye catching but it might be nice to seep out the red and blue parts to emphasise the title once again. ManuElla is backed by 2 female backing singers and a small band who also help with backing vocals. The chorus has a good structure and the pace and key suits her voice well. The chorus is less impressive, especially as the first part is her yodelling for almost no reason. This part is also repeated twice at the end which is a very bad way to finish. She moves around quite well and have a good connection with the camera. The major talking point is the ‘costume change’ which is not very impressive at all, but does answer the question why her white military outfit looks a really bad fit.

Manuela Brečko was only 16 when she entered her first major TV talent competition “Bitke talentov” although she did not reach the latter rounds. Five years later she entered “Misija Evrovizija”, in the hopes of becoming Slovenia’s entrant to Eurovision in 2012, however she was eliminated just before the grand final. Since then she has released a number of songs, including duets and collaborations, and now it looks like her Eurovision journey is back on track.

This song and performance needs a lot of work. The verses are really good and full of promise but by the time the yodelling has stopped you have lost all interest. Making the verses punchier in the backing track and quieter during the yeah-yeah-yeah parts might make it more interesting.  Manuella has a nice enough voice and her accent has a nice lilt to it. I can see what they are trying to do in terms of the staging but it needs to be much more bombastic and over the top or they need to make it a dreamy “Love Story” set up to it.  Although it doesn’t need to be said, they need to lose the awful costume change or at least re-figure it so that is has an impact. Luckily for Manuella, the second half of semi 2 is turning out to be a real hodge-podge of different singing styles and song genres but they also have a handful of neighbours voting too. With a standout set up she could scrape through to the final.

ARTIST – ManuElla

SONG – Blue and red

MUSIC - Marjan Hvala, Manuella Brečko, Leon Oblak

LYRICS – Marjan Hvala, Manuella Brečko, Leon Oblak