AUSTRIA 2022

The Austrian song was revealed on March 11th. In February it was revealed that LUM!X featuring Pia Maria had been internally selected by ORF to represent Austria. The song has its radio premiere on Ö3-Wecker and the video was released shortly afterwards. Their song is called "Halo"

Luca Michlmayr (a.k.a. LUM!X) started making and uploading his self made tracks music very early on. From here Swedish label Bounce United discovered his work and signed him and released a number of songs including many collaborations. His breakthrough came with the song "Thunder" which was remixed with Eiffel 65 member Gabry Ponte and charted in many European countries. With more than 70 weeks in the German single charts, Monster is also one of the songs that stayed in the German single charts the longest. Since 2020 he has had hits inspired by Iggy Pop's "Passengers", "Major Tom" by Peter Schilling ,and Michael Jackson's "Smooth Criminal" 

The song starts fiercely with a shortened version of the chorus. Going to into verse one the beat kicks in under a pattern of short-short-long verse lines which keeps the pace and the variety of rhyme high. After this is a very repetitive pre-chorus which has a very earwormy tune. From here we have a full version of the chorus which leads straight into verse two and into the same pattern as before. Will a minute to go we have a very brief respite with a la-la-la version of the pre-chorus over the same relentless beat. This sets up the 'We will rock you" inspired clap-along chorus as the beat drops out and comes back in again for the second half then comes to a slightly awkward end.

The video to the song is really eye-catching and although it does not necessarily fit the style or message of the song it is an interesting aesthetic. I almost feel like this is a millennial version of "Rock me Amadeus". Alternately I could see them going do the Eurodance 90's club route which would also be really different. Both performers seem to have good charism with each other and down the camera so I think this might look really good on stage. This is a very busy song with loads of layers and different part of the backing track. A lot of the vocals overlap each other so it will be very interesting to see if she sings the song differently so they don't OR if some of these vocals can fit under the 'backing vocals' rule. On first listen I was a little underwhelmed if not a little bit surprised by the song. But this has grown on me a lot, especially as this has such a different feel to almost anything else on the Eurovision menu right now. this could go down so big in the hall, especially with the parts where the audience can interact, and it could be the party track we've been waiting for.

ARTIST - LUM!X ft. Pia Maria
SONG - Halo
WRITING/PRODUCTION CREDITS - flyckt, LUM!X, Anders Nilsen, Gabry Ponte, Sophie Simmons