SWITZERLAND

The Swiss Final was held on February 5th at the SRF TV Studios in Zürich and hosted by Sven Epiney. The winner, solely chosen by televoting, was Timebelle with the song “Apollo”.

Most of the camera work is focused on Miruna, the singer, although there is also a drummer, a pianist and three backing singers, all very badly lit. She stands in the centre of the stage in a strappy and high-slitted red dress and barely moves. She does however have a large range of arms and hand movements at her disposal. Behind her, the main motif is that of different shades of roses. This is then exacerbated at the 2:20 mark when red confetti streams over her like red rose petals.

The song starts off quite gentle then powers up into the first chorus. The verses are pretty tuneless but also fairly predictable in terms of progression. There is quite a jump melodically into the chorus and the pitch starts higher than you would expect. What jars is that she then goes even higher and the very small use of her falsetto voice feels a little uncomfortable. There is a sizable bridge section around the 1.50 mark which a) feels very early and b) the lyrics are totally indecipherable. The song is saved by the fact that Miruna can belt this out almost effortlessly.

Unfortunately, this national final continued the standard of the last 2 editions of the Entscheidungsshow - that of being really poor. The songs were passable and the artists seemed ok but the whole presentation felt very lack lustre.  It seemed quite obvious even before the live show that Timebelle would win. Partly because they had the best package but also a slight sympathy vote as they were placed second in the Swiss final in 2015, as possibly should have won then.

This is an OK ballad performed by a singer who could possibly do a lot better than this - that is about it. Apart for the singer’s ethnicity (she is Romanian, although the rest of the band is from Bern) I cannot see why anyone in the jury or televote would vote for this. Unless they redesign ‘the show’ to be more memorable or the rest of the songs chosen in the coming months are VERY dull or every other performer sings out of tune, this will be staying firmly in the semi-final.

ARTIST - Timebelle

SONG - Apollo

MUSIC - Elias Näslin, Nicolas Günthardt, Alessandra Günthardt

LYRICS - Elias Näslin, Nicolas Günthardt, Alessandra Günthardt