GEORGIA

The Georgian Final was held on March 3rd at the Tbilisi Concert Hall, hosted by Vaniko Tarkhnishvili & Ruska Makashvili. Before the final there were elimination shows to whittle down the contestants to a final 4. The voting will be a mixture of televoting & Facebook Messenger. The winning act was Oto Nemsadze and he will be singing the song and he will be singing “Sul Tsin Iare” (Go ahead)

During the show Oto was alone on stage although he had a full band kit behind him not being used which looked very odd indeed! He is centre stage with 5 male singers on backing to his side. For the first part of the show the video screens display blue skies with fluffy white clouds but then this is overlaid with fluttering Georgian flags. It certainly comes across as quite nationalistic, which doesn’t come across well at Eurovision but may also just have been celebrating the fact this is Georgian Idol! There are even some smoke and pyrotechnics used during the song.

The song is a rocky, impassioned ballad entirely in Georgian. Oto has quite a growly powerful tone which very much suits the songs structure but less so the song’s production, but this could be changed/vamped up between now and then. The song starts off quite small and low in tone. It also takes quite a long time to get into gear which is frustrating as there are not many clues to tell you quite what’s going on. The song finally starts taking shape just before the 2 minute mark after the first chorus. Oto’s voice really soars in the second half but the ending comes too quickly and ends up being a bit of a jolt. All in all,there is promise but not much seems to happen, progress or deveop.

The bare bones of this song are not bad but the direction of this piece is all over the place. Oto, very clearly, has a rock voice but the instrumentation on the backing track is very weak and this makes it look like he is over singing the song. If the backing was more echoey, fiercer and contained more guitars the balance of the track could be restored. Obviously the production values of the national final and parameters such as cameras, stage size and costume will be vastly different in Israel and one might hope that a more intricate show would also help.

As dramatic as this is, right now it really doesn’t work. Although Georgia is an ex-Soviet stave, only two of them are in the their semi. Last year’s Georgian language number didn’t translate well at all into actual votes, however this is in a much more accessible genre which could be its saving grace.

ARTIST –  Oto Nemsadze

SONG –  Sul Tsin Iare (Go ahead)

MUSIC -  Roman Giorgadze

LYRICS - Einar Stefánsson Roman Giorgadze