SPAIN

The Spanish Final was held on January 29th at Parc Audiovisual de Catalunya in Terrassa, hosted by Roberto Leal. The winner was chosen by televoting in two rounds of voting - the first to select the top 3 and the second to select the winner. The show was eventually won by the song "Tu canción" sung by Alfred & Amaia.

The setting of the song is ultra simple. There are each sat on a piano – one black, one white mimicking the yin yang symbol. This isn’t really made much of after this point so feels like a useless message. After the first verse they move towards the middle of the stage for the chorus. They then spend the rest of the song singing very close to each other incusing a very awkward swaying thing where they change sides of the stage. They are VERY close to each other and almost unaware of the audience and cameras and end with a small kiss.

The song has a slight jazz edge to it and the backing track is very quiet with piano being the most prominent instrument. It is not until the “oh oh oh” part around the 2 minute mark dose the orchestration ramp up, only to ebb way again for the final reprise of the chorus. Their voices aren’t too bad his, in particular, really suits this style of song. Amaia’s voice is very clear although during the last chorus you start to wonder how confident she is – I felt that she could hit a bum note any moment.

It has been quite a while since Spain used the Operación Triunfo show to select their entrant and singer and I think at least this mechanism has gone down well with the Spanish public and has garnered ore interests and support for the contest. On first watch and listen, I found this quite uncomfortable and a bit cringy to watch. The visuals need a lot of work, and in fairness they have not had a lot of time to really work on it. Their singing is not bad, considering my concerns, and it’s not really a bad song. It’s quite a sweet song, almost like a lullaby, however some people have already commented it is too close to “Amar Pelos Dois” to feel really authentic. Also how lasting is the real-life duet – what if they break up between now and May?!?!!? Awks. In my opinion, the other two songs in the final 3 were much better than this and even though we are only 4 songs down this is by far the weakest song yet.

ARTIST – Alfred & Amaia

SONG – Tu canción (Your song)

MUSIC - Raúl Gómez, Sylvia Santoro

LYRICS - Raúl Gómez, Sylvia Santoro