The Austrian song was revealed on March 1st - with the audio available on youtube. An official video was scheduled to be premiered alongside but this was delayed until the 4th. In January, broadcaster ORF announced their act; the song title was released the following month. The Austrian song for Malmö is "We will rave" by Kaleen.
Kaleen (real name Marie-Sophie Kreissl) grew up around dance and at just the age of seven she won her first Austrian ballet championship. She did however study a wide range of dance and chorography genres and in 2015 took part - with her dance partner - in the German version of "Got to Dance" going all the way to the final. Since then she has worked closely with Austrian broadcaster as a choreographer and director for many ORF programmes. During the last 6 years she has also been involved in the background work of many Eurovision projects including: a rehearsal stand in for "Fuego", dancer/choreographer of the 2018 interval act, director of the Spanish and Bulgarian jESC entries as well as stage director for the whole 2022 jESC contest. In 2021, she founded Wifi Records where she released her debut album in 2023.
This a dance-pop song with more than a nod to the techno genre. Here, the instrumentation is really key as it is truly portrays that European electronic '90s sound that seems to be so popular right now. Because of this, the background is full of changes of tempo, beat and instrumentation and certainly keep you on your toes. The song follows a verse-pre chorus-chorus structure with lots of music breaks and bridges in between with a rather rare trope of a false finish and a chorus to end. Before the last chorus there is a sizable instrumental which will certainly be used as a dance break for Kaleen. There also seems to be some vocal processing during the pre-chorus and it will be interesting to see if the song can work without this, unless the processing can be enabled live. Alternatively this could be left on the backing track but this is a very large section to be left like this.
This may well be a fun, dancy and nostalgic song but it has a very honest and serious heart to it. The '90s revival is back in full effect at Eurovision this year and would be very easy to compare this to similarly nuanced songs already on the menu .However,unlike some entries that have an obvious performance level to it, "We will rave" is a straightforward song, performed straight down the line and without an obvious shtick that other songs may have. This will go down very big in the hall and I hope that the delegation use the audience and the lights to really keep that evocative feel. The video, to me, was a little disappointing as it didn't really add anything to the song or have much of a narrative - apart from sex sells! Although a staging like this might give a plateful of eye candy to the viewers at home and in the auditorium, one might see this as a low move in order to get votes. It would've been nice to have had more extended sections of dancing because we know that this is something she excels at. I am a little worried about the live vocal performance because if the visuals are not up to much there will be little to hide behind performance wise. The changes in vocal style in the different parts of the song may be a stretch to accomplish live if there is also a lot of dancing. The jury will be out on how successful this will be until we hear a live performance.
ARTIST - Kaleen
SONG - We will rave
WRITING/PRODUCTION CREDITS - Julie Aagaard, Thomas Stengaard, Jimmy "Joker" Thörnfeldt, Anderz Wrethov
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