FRANCE

The French entry was revealed on February 9^th via Eurovision.tv. As with the previous 2 entries the singer and song was internally selected by the French broadcaster France Télévisions. The selected act is Alma and she will be singing the all French language entry “Requiem”

The entry was initially posted as a music video but later that day a video surfaced of her performing the song live at the melty Future Awards which is where I will be taking most of my cues from, Alma is dressed quite plainly in a short blue dress and strappy shoes. Although she stays still on the spot she is quite active and gets involved in the song. The background is quite generic with strips of coloured light which was probably more geared towards suiting the whole show and not her performance. During the main bridge, she is joined on stage a by two dancers who mainly dance together in loose tango fashion. There are backing singers on the track and these will need to be factored in at some point.

The song starts off and is quite moody but slightly lacking in tune. The bridge is the part that starts to grab your attention as the constant change of tone is very engaging and you can also start to figure out what she is saying. However, this part would sound very bad if sung out of tune. The chorus is not bad but not exactly singable.  In fact, the chorus most stands out when at the very end of the song she just sings the first part of each line. The whole thing has quite a memorable feel about it which may make it stand out.

On one side this feel like this is a work in progress. I give her respect for performing this live but she needs work vocally. I also suspect that ‘the show’ will be much more polished and eye catching than this. The song, especially coming after the success of Amir in 2016, feels quite filmic and possibly sounds more in tone to Patricia Kaas’ ballad from 2009.

My initial reaction to this was that if felt similar - too similar -  to Stromae’s “Tous les memes”. Now, what his song lacks in tune, it more than makes up for it in attitude, energy and pure storytelling. The more I hear “Requiem” the more I notice that these things are lacking. Part of me thinks that on a first listen – and many viewers first listen will be in the grand final – many might think this is contemporary, original and striking and might get quite a few votes. But many, like myself, may find it a little to derivative and lacking in ooomph. I think this will be a bit of a fan fave, and possibly a song juries might enjoy, but a result like last year looks quite unlikely. Unless there is quite a radical staging upgrade, I can’t see this leaving the right hand side of the scoreboard.

ARTIST - Alma

SONG -Requiem

MUSIC - Nazim Khaled

LYRICS - Nazim Khaled