THE NETHERLANDS

The Dutch song was unveiled on March 4th at press conference in Amsterdam held by AVROTROS. Back in September 2015, the Dutch broadcaster internally selected the singer Douwe Bob but all information about the song was held until the conference. The song he will be singing is “Slow Down”.

The song is a plodding country song. Part of me wishes I could stop the review there...

The verses of the song are nice enough and hold a nice enough tune but the chorus is over repetitive in terms of lyrics and the tune is too static, feels more like a stuck record than a proper chorus. In fact the best part of the song is the ending as the song actually slows down. The piano instrumentation is possibly the stand out part of the track. It certainly sounds like the kind of song that would be lapped up by the American country scene but not in Eurovision.

Douwe has singing in his blood as his father is a member of the group The Fool. Douwe himself started on the piano then moved to playing guitar. His big break came in 2012 when he won the Dutch show “De beste singer-songwriter van Nederland”. His first release after winning the show, "Multicoloured Angels", got to number 17 in the Dutch Top 40. Since then he has also released 2 albums with most of the songs written or co-written by himself.

As it was a video premiere, I don’t get a feel for his performance style or as to how it might be presented on stage. Coming from a reality-show background I wouldn't see much problem in him feeling comfortable performing in front of millions of people and as he had a hand int eh song himself, it should be comfortable for him to sing.  It is very likely, as seen in the video, he will sing playing the guitar and probably backed by a small band. The problem is, I don’t think any of this matters. This is such a boring, plodding, nondescript song and this is so disappointing. It seems as though AVROSTROS have become sucked in by the success of the Common Linnets that they have become blinkered by the idea of keeping down the country route. This won’t going to set the Globen alight with emotion or with vigour. However it might cause a queue to the gents. This won’t be qualifying

ARTIST – Douwe Bob

SONG – Slow down

MUSIC – Douwe Bob, Jan Peter Hoekstra, Jeroen Overman, Matthijs van Duijvenbode

LYRICS – Douwe Bob, Jan Peter Hoekstra, Jeroen Overman, Matthijs van Duijvenbode