BELARUS

The Belarussian Final was held on February 16th at BTRC Studio 600 Metrov in Minsk, hosted by Olga Ryzhikova & Teo. The winner was chosen by televoting (50%) and an "expert" jury (50%). Winning both parts of the vote was Alekseev with the song “Forever”

The singer is alone on stage throughout the whole number. He is dressed in an led suit which lights up in different patterns and colours depending on the part of the song he is singing. The backdrop works in tandem with the suit showing a myriad of monochrome images, shapes and strobing lines. As a concept, this is an interesting one, however I think this is an idea more for those in the hall than on TV. |On a wide shot the effect works fine but on close up it looks far too random and the sight of the bulbs so close up almost ruins the ‘magic’.

The song itself is a smooth contemporary ballad. The tune of the song seems very memorable and the chord progression quite familiar. The repetitive piano accompaniment is something well used in modern pop songs. He starts off singing very very low which really sound at all good but once he gets to the next part he goes up an octave which feels much more comfortable. The chorus also roves a problems as several times during each reprise of it he falls flat on many of the big notes. In addition the lyrics, if not a little banal and written in slightly broken English, is made worse by Alekseev’s poor pronunciation. In fact the part he sings best is the bridge at the 2 min. mark.

One of the many problems one has as a Eurovision fan is that sometimes the back story behind an act can overshadow how you view of the song itself. Alekseev had initially entered this into his homeland national final, Ukraine, but withdrew so he could enter Eurofest in Belarus. Many see this as quite a cowardly and unnerving move especially seeing the pool of acts entering the NF for Belarus was much smaller. Add this to the fact that a Russian language version of this has been available for quite a while might have made this ineligible but yet it still stands. Whatever I may think of the ‘legality’ of the song not much can get past the fact that as good as the song is, it is very badly sung. In addition looking at the other songs and acts in its semi this is vanilla plus with few neighbours to boost its votes they are already on the back foot. If they get through to the final with this I will be very surprised.

ARTIST – Alekseev

SONG – Forever

MUSIC - Kyrylo Pavlov, Evhen Matyushenko

LYRICS - Kyrylo Pavlov, Evhen Matyushenko