NORTH MACEDONIA

The North Macedonian entry was revealed on March 8th as the music video for his Eurovision entry was premiered online. Back in January MKRTV announced that singer Vasil has been internally selected by the Macedonian broadcaster and his song would be revealed at a later date. His song for Rotterdam is called "You"

Vasil's music video is very dance heavy, in fact Vasil barely moves his mouth throughout the whole thing. Vasil walks to the bar and gets a drink when a female walks behind him and they then start dancing. Vasil and female dancer are rather modestly dressed in black and burgundy, almost in workout gear rather than dancing outfits. The dancing is part tango inspired but also contains some street and commercial influences. You kind of forget that Vasil is actually the singer of the song which makes you wonder IF he can dance and sing at the same time...?

The song has a slightly latino feel but this one is much more of the Tango variety with the instrumentation of strings and accordion. After a small intro we start with verse one which is light in the backing track but this beefs up through the prechorus by adding a beat and more prominent accordion. The chorus is highly repetitive in terms of lyrics and tune but Vasil gets around this by singing parts of the second half in falsetto which livens things up a but when it could get a little samey. Verse two comes in but is only half the length of verse one and goes straight into the pre-chorus and chorus. The bridge part has a Latino-/Balkan feel with the voice modulations and feels more like the ending of the song - but it's not! This goes into the final chorus but the start of if is very different to before and feel more like the middle eight not the ending of the song, the ending is very definite, if not a little predictable.

I think that this song has a great personality and really does stand out against the other entries we have this year. That said it needs to make sure that the visual identity of the song is strong too. Applying the video set up of sorts onto the stage is a total must. otherwise this will just feel like another generic dance song.Obviously I am not expecting Vasil to be dancing full out on stage but there needs to be some kind of dancing on stage, maybe even some instrumentalists doubling up and backing singers and maybe even some chairography.
If Vasil can sing this decently and the staging is right this has a good chance of qualifying but something at the back of my mind thinks that something about this show is going to let it down. If the show is to introverted and too focused on the dancing it might not work and if his singing is impeded by too much fuss on stage it won't work either. Maybe this just doesn't quite have the pull for people at home to vote for it or the pull for juries either.

Artist - Vasil
Song - You
Composers - Lazar Cvetkovski, Darko Dimitrov, Nevena Neskoska
Lyricists - Kalina Neskoska, Nevena Neskoska, Alice Schroeder

NORTH MACEDONIA

The North Macedonian entry was released on March 8^th. The song was to be released on 4 March, but the release date was changed to 8 March 2019 to coincide with International Women's Day. Back in January it was announced that 2008 FYROM representative Tamara Todevska would be singing for the newly renamed nation. The entry is called “Proud”.

The video is shot in colour but a lot of the clothing is black and white and the background is mostly grey, so one might get the impression it was shot in black and white. It shows a number of different women (hence the date change) looking and performing to the camera, including Tamara herself. There is not a lot of narrative to the shots but this could work as an interesting backdrop for the Eurovision shows.

The song is an emotional ballad and has very sparse instrumentation throughout. During the first verse and chorus there is only a piano present and in the second chorus a single violin joins in. After this there is a short interlude where the violin and piano and the tune of the violin starts to have a slight Balkan feel which gives this part some character. There then starts another verse but Tamara’s voice is much more powerful than the first time around and  the piano is much more staccato and has a driving beat. At this point a chorus of backing singers also joins and join in with the tune for the rest of the song. The ending of the song is slightly left in the air and the last ‘girl’ feel a little empty and lacking meaning.

Although this year has many ballads this one really stands out with its stripped-back backing track and its repetitive message gets through to you without being an annoying earworm. If Tamara can sing this with gusto and connect with the camera this could do really well. I think the ending culd do with a bit of tweaking but I hope the rest of the song stays as it it. I guess the biggest issue is staging and this country has quite the reputation of messing up and even failing on staging. I can imagine a pianist and violinist on stage – possibly only lit up when they start playing – joined by some backing singers. It might even be worth having something akin to the sea of faces behind her too. This needs no dancers, no intricate lightning it just needs to be simple to make sure the message comes across

I really like this and think that unlike some of the other ballads of show the simplicity of the music lets the words shine through, If it doesn’t mess up the staging this should easily qualify and I would really like this to do well.

ARTIST –  Tamara Todevska

SONG – Proud

MUSIC -  Darko Dimitrov, Robert Bibliov, Lazar Cvetkoski

LYRICS - Kosta Petrov, Sanja Popovska