SLOVENIA

The Slovene selection was held on February 22nd at the RTVSLO TV Studios in Ljubljana, hosted by Klemen Slakonja. Before the final there was an online selection called "EMA Freš" where 2 extra songs joined the final alongside the 10 other pre-selected finalists. The winner was chosen in two rounds of voting - in the first round the jury selected the top 2 songs where the winner was be chosen solely by televoting. The winner was Ana Soklič with "Voda" (Water)

Ana is alone on stage and there are not even any backing singers on the track. She is wearing a simplistic fitted trouser suit with a long white cape. During parts of the song the white colour is used to effect in order to cast shadow effects on her front but it is a bit of a shame to see that she barely 'uses' the cape at all. She has long blonde hair which is carefully placed down her back.

The colour palette of the staging is a kind of turquoise/aquamarine colour which gives the feeling of being underwater - which is a nice tie into the name of the song. Looking closer at the backdrop you can see the outline of trees, ferns and river banks, another nod to the title. A mirror/kaleidoscope effect is used part way to give the backdrop some movement. During the verses there is a nice use of shadow and light almost like she is hiding amongst the trees and ferns. Right at the end the beams of light converge to a central point which, at the right camera angle, makes if look the light is emanating out of her.

After a short introduction, Ana starts with a verse and bridge. The tempo and instrumentation is quite ploddy, even for a ballad, the tune is rather hard to catch and going straight into the bridge makes it feel like it is going on forever. The start of the chorus after 80 seconds brings some dynamic to the song and gives us some repetitive melody that we can get into, however even that peters out as it gets to the end. Just before the 2 minute mark we have our second verse and this runs straight into the chorus which works much much better. In the chorus, the melody is changed up a little with a big note right in the middle which also works better with the quieter end to the song.

This is quite a difficult listen and I imagine it to be quite bewildering for many on a first/only listen in its semi-final. It's not down to the language or to Ana's voice but more down to the composition of the song. As I've already stated it's rather dour and takes too long to get going. The last minute works really well and I almost feel that two lots of verse/chorus and a final chorus with big notes might have worked much better. For the casual watcher you are not quite sure what is going on or what the song is about and this lack of connection will put off the voting public.
Ana has good stage presence and her voice carries the song off really well. Part of me wishes there was a little bit more movement, not just theatrical gestures, and that her outfit was used more as I think it is a very pretty stage outfit. That said I'm not sure I would like to see extra dancers on stage as the song is really about the connection to Ana down the camera. This is definitely a performance made for the the audience not the crowd in the hall. Unfortunately I don't think this is going to stand out enough at Eurovision unless something very drastic is done to it. There have been rumours about a switch of language but I think won't make a jot of difference.

Artist - Ana Soklič

Artist - Ana Soklič
Song - Voda (Water)
Composers - Bojan Simončič, Ana Soklič
Lyricist - Ana Soklič