ARMENIA

The Armenian entry was finally revealed on March 18^th via the official video. Back in December, the final of Depi Evratesil was held at ARMTV TV Studios in Yerevan, hosted by Gohar Gasparyan. The winner during the final was chosen by SMS voting (50%) & an "expert" jury of Armenian diaspora musicians (50%). The winner of the show would be selected as the Eurovision entrant with a song to selected at a later date. Going to Kyiv is Artsvik singing the song ‘Fly with me”

The main part of the video is set on a brightly coloured stage with different levels to it. She performs the song in a black dress with coloured bands on it that changes colour at different points in the song, however I don’t think it is particularly flattering for her. She has a plethora of dancers backing her which adds a lot of strength and power to the performance. The dancers work well together and at times it feels like she is control of what they are doing, almost like a puppet master. Although she doesn’t go into a full on dance routine, it is mostly armography, it is obvious she can maintain a good level of choreography and could do something similar on stage.

The song is very ethnic and the backing music is very beautiful and intricate. The lyrics and tune that lies on top of it is very non-descript and changeable. The beginning is quite a jazzy, almost spoken word introduction which then gets interrupted by a deep beat which leads into a verse. This leads into a refrain of oooooohs which has a very mystical and eastern feel. It then goes back to another verse but she sings this much more strongly and with her full voice. This then leads into what I guess is the chorus as it contains the title of the song, however there is no backing music change between here and the verse so feels a little bit flat. After this is then a sizable instrumental which is very elaborate with lots of nanobeats and percussion. This is then followed by a final chorus but with a totally different tune to the first one.

So this has elements of a ballad but is far too abstract, ethnic and innovate to be but unto that box. This is possibly the most ‘arty’ song of this year and the video styling really emphasises this. However, looking through all of this creative veneer there is actually very little to get your teeth into. The lyrical hooks don’t stand out enough and there are too many ‘bits’ that don’t get repeated and you find yourself struggling to find one bit you can plant in your brain and remember it.

It must be said that in the last few years, Armenia have been one of the countries taking an ‘out of the box’ approach tot heir entries and have come up with something very different and highly memorable to the stage. Unfortunately this year, they have brought the ‘art’ but not the ‘pop’. I cannot see how any first listener to this could enjoy this and vote for it. As we know, however, the diaspora of this country will vote and might be enough to get it through although I personally think there are 10 other songs I would prefer to see in the final than this.

ARTIST - Artsvik

SONG - Fly with me

MUSIC - Lilit Navasardyan, Levon Navasardyan

LYRICS - Avet Barseghyan, David Tserunyan.