CYPRUS 2022

The Cypriot song and entrant and were revealed on March 8th. This was unveiled via the premiere of the song and video on the official Eurovision channel. The singer Andromache will be performing "Ela" 

Andromáchi Dimitropoúlou grew up in Germany and she moved with her family to Greece when she was 10. In 2015, she appeared as a contestant on the Greek edition of The Voice joining Michalis Kouinelis' team but was eliminated in the second of the live shows. She did not take this disappointment to heart and soon got signed to Panik Records. Her Eurovision entry will be her eighth song release to date. Her music is generally sung in Greek and has an ethereal folk/modern mix.

To start there is some plucking of strings and some synthesised chanting. Already you get a feeling that this is fusing traditional ideals and modern techniques. As verse one begins the backing track is very low and delicate. During the pre-chorus, words come sharper and quicker and then the beat comes to light in the chorus. The switch from English into Greek is not too much of a jerk because her style is not changing. We then repeat this process to get to just over the two minute mark. After a brief instrumental and vague bridge the chorus is again repeated to the end of the song.

This has an unmistakable Greek sound and will obviously appeal to those of a Greek background. The backing track has some traditional elements but also has a kind of 'white noise' feel which gives it an atmospheric sound. The English lyrics are simplistic and the tune is not that memorable. The Hellenic style warbling at the end of the lines lessens the power of the tune even more. The chorus is much more meaty and authentic and does a lot of the heavy lifting but the lack of a final line is a slight disappointment. The video has a nice aesthetic which compliments the old-but-new feel of the song. It will be interesting to see if any of visual appears on stage in May. One question I ask myself is 'how on earth did it take so many songwriters to create something so very dreary?' It's not bad, it's not good and I have to wonder who will vote for this.

ARTIST - Andromache 

SONG - Ela

WRITING/PRODUCTION CREDITS -  Arash, Y. Limani, E. Mirzazadeh, F. Miftaraj, A. Papaconstantinou,  G. Papadopoulos, F. Raçi Fifi, G. Sandell, V. Svensson, R. Uhlmann