The Belgian song was revealed on March 10th. Back in September the Walloon broadcaster RTBF revealed that Jérémie Makiese had been internally selected to represent Belgium. The song was revealed via its first radio play on Vivacité, then the video premiere on channel La Une and its official release on the official Eurovision channel. His song is entitled "Miss you"
Jérémie was born in Antwerp and is of Congolese heritage His family moved around Belgium and learned both Dutch and French. Although his talent for singing was honed through singing at church, at the age of 13, he started to play as a goalkeeper for BX Brussels and has since played for numerous different clubs. In 2021, Jérémie auditioned for "The Voice Belgique" and after all four of the judges turned he chose too join Beverly Jo Scott's team. After tackling artists just as James Arthur, Bruno Mars, Gregory Porter and Christophe Maé, he became the series winner. HIs musical style is pop but with a soul and R&B leaning.
The song starts with a brief but dramatic violin intro before going straight into the piano-backed first verse. During the pre-chorus and chorus the strings join in but you also get the feeling Jérémie is not giving his all (yet) to the performance. At 50 second in we are already into verse two and although the tune and structure has not changed there is a very dominant beat and the pulsing of an electric guitar which replaces the piano. After the pre-chorus and chorus there is a short bridge before entering a last chorus, some odd freeform bits then a final recall of the first verse with some riffing and vocal gymnastics to end.
On my first consumption of this song I felt very confused and bewildered and really not so sure what to think. It suddenly dawned on me that this video is just AWFUL. I get that this is an urban style ballad but the chorography and outfits are much more suited to something more robust and lyrically harder than this. Therefore I would suggest to anyone about to watch the video that they just listen to it! After my brief confusion I realised the song really is not bad at all. Lyrically it is simplistic but in a way that makes it memorable - the repetition of 'sometimes' in the first verse and the refrain of 'no' in the chorus'. The chorus in particular is very clever and creates an interesting dynamic of fast and slow, call and response that I could see being copied in the hall. This song feels very contemporary, modern and unlike anything else on the palette this year. The structure of the whole song means it speeds along quite quickly and you get a lot of song for your 3 minutes. However, this entry is going absolutely nowhere with that bad boy/krump aesthetic in the video. If they go with the soul boy in a nice suit version they might just get away with it.
ARTIST - Jérémie Makiese
SONG - Miss you
WRITING/PRODUCTION CREDITS - BGRZ, Paul Ivory, Jérémie Makiese, Silvio Lisbonne, Manon Romiti
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