SLOVENIA 2021

The Slovenian song was released on February 27th, hosted by Lea Sirk and Nejc Šmit via a special edition of EMA. The act selected to represent Slovenia in 2020, Ana Soklič, was reselected way back in May and preparations were made to internally select a song for her. The song she will sing is "Amen" 

Ana sings the song in a studio. The stage is dark apart from horizonal lines of changing colour that accentuates the space of the room, Ana is stood alone in a creamy white outfit with a kind of side-shoulder cape going on. Her eye make up is quite dark and her hair is down with a sort of slicked back wet look going on. Near the end of the song flames appear from the floor and the stage turns from a dark blue of a red glow. The camera is doing most of the movement as Ana stays pretty much rooted to the spot.

The song starts off with Ana singing low and gently over a piano backing Her voice is quite different and much sassier than her ballad from last year. There is then a brief pause at the backing gathers together into a kind of atmospheric white noise which some backing singers in the background. we then go back to the verses but this time with piano and a very unusual beat. The backing singers also join in the end of here which leads a little more seamlessly into another chorus where the choir continues to sing. The bridge starts off small but the choir helps build up the song into another final chorus with a rather awkward key change. In this last chorus the choir is very prominent as is the drum beat which gives it quite the gospel feel which given some of the religious lyrics is not incongruitous. The backing then kind of gets sucked away so only the piano is left and we have a reprise of the opening line to end.

Ana began her musical career as part of the outfit Diona Dimm and had a number of unsuccessful attempt to enter Eurovision. There was some hope that she may be able to make her career lift of with a move to Sweden but it did not work out. She made a bit of a comeback in 2012 by entering Slovenian X Factor. After Eurovision was cancelled in 2021 RTV Slovenija quickly re-installed her as their representative in 2021.

For me the verses are the star of this song. I quite like the slightly lower register tone of Ana's voice which with the piano backing gives the song a more jazzy feel. The chorus feels too much of a contrast, I almost want the song to get bigger through each step rather than alternating between styles. In particular I find the key change from the bridge into  final chorus a bit of an assault on the senses and is almost too much . Also the title of the song is hidden right at the end of the verses in her lower register and is easily missed. In Eurovision terms there is a reason why the title 'Hallelujah' might be slightly frowned upon but here are several other potential titles they could have had, such as "Hey Child" Personally I much preferred her song from last year to this. I loved the Slovenian language in that song and I like the understated way she sang it. "Voda" grew on you whilst "Amen" wanes very quickly. It starts to come across as a bit affected as I she's trying to put too much into a song that really isn't that good.

ARTIST - Ana Soklič
SONG - Amen
WRITING CREDITS - Charlie Mason, Žiga Pirnat, Ana Soklič, Bojan Simončič