SWITZERLAND 2025

The Swiss song was officially revealed on March 10th with the official video release. A few days earlier, the Swiss delegation announced the act that would be the home performer. Going to Basel is Zoë Më with the song "Voyage" (Journey)

Zoë Alina Kressler is the person behind Zoë Më. She was actually born in Basel but spent most of her life in Fribourg. Here, she studied at La Gustav Academy which is a renowned educational musical establishment. She began writing her own songs at the age of ten and sings and writes in both French and German even though she was not brought up bilingual. Last year, she won the RTS Artiste Radar and SRF 3 Best Talent award and has performed at the world-famous Montreux Jazz Festival. Over the past 7 years she has released twelve singles and two EPs. Her music is best described as Poetic pop and chanson.

The music is minimal and orchestral with sweeping violins, pizzicato embellishments and rumbles of the timpani to add tension and emphasis to the track. Zoë starts singing almost immediately with a long but nicely phrased verse. This and the pre chorus are a little wordy, but delivered in a soft way. This leads straight into the chorus which repeats the title of the song several times and has longer held notes. This structure is run through again but with some changes in the phrasing. After the second chorus there is a slight change of pace with the main line of the chorus being repeated over and over again. The tempo slowly accelerates as Zoë sings over a Tango instrumentation. But just as it starts getting faster the music peters out and Zoë brings the song out of a minor key, back into something more positive and returning to the familiar haunts of the chorus, for the last time, almost acappella. The video sees Zoe in a busy street, sometimes in broad daylight sometimes in darkness. There is a strong motif of flowers throughout the visual; this matches some of the lyrics which compares humans to flowers because "they grow better when the are watered".

In Eurovision terms this song reminds me a lot of Victoria's output in 2020/21 for Bulgaria. However I much prefer this Swiss entry to either of those songs, perhaps the French content makes it sound more palatable or that this style of singing seems more suited, or more culturally resonant, to the French language. The sweeping strings and pure instrumentation makes it stand out compared to the more bombastic and in your face entries this year. Her voice is very small, which lends itself to this style of singing and songwriting but it is intriguing to think how they can replicate an intimate vocal arrangement on a live stage. Her demeanour in the video is also slightly refreshing; she does not go overboard facially or gesturally and you focus on what she is singing and how she is singing.  Part of me hopes that the staging will be simplistic with basic lights and little movement. I almost imagine her alone on stage in a spotlight, adding minimal movement in the Tango part with a brightening up of the stage to the end. I expect French speaking televote to engage with this and a similar affect in the jury vote too, not just the French speakers.

ARTIST - Zoë Më

SONG - Voyage

WRITING/PRODUCTION CREDITS - Zoë Alina Kressler, Emily Middlemas, Tom Oehler