MONTENEGRO

The Montenegrin Final was held on February 9th at the RTCG TV Studios in Podgorica. In the first round the top 2 was chosen by a mixture of public, radio station jury, international and Montenegrin juries. In the second round the winner was solely chosen by SMS voting. The winner was the group D-Moll singing “Heaven”

The six-piece vocal group are all dressed in black trouser suits and are standing and sitting in various places in front of a musical stave. During the song there is very little movement apart from the odd bit of shuffling about and some rather over-theatrical interactions with each other and the camera. Although the concept is a bit naff, I feel they could have really gone over the top and tried more with the levels and movement but all in all it’s very sedentary. At the end the all join hands to (possibly) make a musical note but again this just looks odd.

The first verse and chorus of the song are quite gentle and ballady, however their performance style comes across as a bit over the top and exaggerated for the style but during the second verse the beat kicks in properly. I say ‘beat’ is is quite a simplistic and steady beat but very safe and middle of the road sounding. In fact it sounds like a lot of middling Eurovision entries from the early 2000s. The chorus is actually quite earwormy – in a cheesy kind of way – but its simplistic and predictable lyrics makes it feel very old fashioned indeed. The chorus is repeated several times during the song and by the end it feels like its gone on for hours rather than minutes. The group don't sing the song badly and most of the time is sounds quite nice however I feel that they are just 'singing' and that opportunities to harmonise and emphasis their vocal qualities are wasted on this song - or maybe they can't...

Although Montevizija was a small affair, the songs were quite diverse and so in many ways it is a shame that this, the only song in English and the safest song of the lot, won. The song is what it is and I don’t think much will or can be done to to the song but a lot could be done to make it look more modern in the presentation. If they are going to keep the ‘musical’ interpretation then they need scope to move up, down or about the stage as I feel the static nature of the performance is stifling their projection down the camera and into the audience. Ideally I could see them ditching the background and doing something totally different. As there are already 6 of them, there is no scope for adding extra backing singers or dancers so the extra dynamics needed will need to come from the band themselves.

This is possibly the most stereotypical Eurovision song chosen this year and as is looks and feels really dated. I cannot see how this will move to the Saturday night show. If this qualifies it won't becaue this is good, but that its semi final must have been really awful.

ARTIST – D-Moll

SONG – Heaven

MUSIC -  Aleksandar Miličić, Dejan Božović

LYRICS - Aleksandar Miličić, Dejan Božović