The Macedonian entry was
released on March 10th in the form of the official video.
Back in November it was
announced that Jana Burčeska had been internally selected and that her song
would be unveiled at a later date. Her song is called “Dance alone”.
The video release of this is
very interesting as many fans have been captured by its story. In short the old
lady uses virtual reality glasses to watch herself, and presumably her late
husband, when they were young – or possibly a reincarnation of how they would be if
they were young now. These clips are interspersed with her doing normal
things around the house, which emphasises her loneliness. It is a very strong visual, a great piece of storytelling and works well with the song and reel you into the whole package.
Her song is a modern radio
tune with more than a passing nod to the electronica of the 80s. The vocals in
the verses have been altered slightly to give it a slightly dull, old fashioned
far away finish. This effect really works with the video but I am not quite
sure how or if this could be replicated on stage. The verses are quite stylised
feeling like she’s talking rather than singing and so require good diction. The
chorus is quite catchy as the words are simplistic and tune is repetitive and
the movement between verse to chorus to verse feels really seamless.
This is a very pleasing entry
and not one you would expect from Macedonia.
My issue is that the video
has overshadowed the song. Although many people have liked the quality of the
song, I have seen and heard more chat about the narrative of the video. Now
although this will give more footfall to the official video my worry will be
more about the stage show at Eurovision. I very much doubt that this narrative
could be transferred to the stage and having the video as a background would
just not work. I almost think that any stage show just wouldn’t work as well as
the video does. This twinned with the fact
that the vocals probably won’t sound the same on the night and that semi 2 is
more diverse, means it could be more of a struggle. If this had been in semi 1
this would easily qualify.
ARTIST - Jana Burčeska
SONG – Dance alone
MUSIC - Joacim Persson, Alex Omar, Florence A, Bobi-Leon
Milanov
LYRICS - Joacim Persson, Alex Omar, Florence A, Bobi-Leon
Milanov
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