AZERBAIJAN

The Azeri song was unveiled on March 10th via the release of the music video online. A few weeks previous it had been revealed that Samira Efendi (stylised as Efendi) had been internally selected by İctimai Television. Her song is called "Cleopatra"

Most of the video takes place in a vast desert area. For the first part of the video Efendi and co are dressed in modern versions of Ancient Egyptian costumes with lots of black, gold and ornate make up and headwear. As the song moves on her style changes into much more modern garb - baseball caps, jackets and jeans but in a similar colour scheme. Her last outfit  a very elaborate, and tight, black dress which is very stiff looking and seems quite restrictive or maybe she is not a confident dancer. There are plenty of dancers around throughout the whole thing and certainly adds some energy to the showcase.

This song is a literal jigsaw puzzle of bits, some of which work some of which doesn't. The songs starts with Efendi vocalising in that mystical Eastern way whilst a number of ethnic instruments start up. We start with verse 1 and the pre chorus before the song suddenly stops in favour of some Buddhist chanting and the chorus then slams back out the other side. The chorus is very earwormy made mostly of la-la-las and the title o the song. Verse 2 continues the pattern but the beat here is doubled which gives it a much more modern feel. The pre chorus this time is much shorter before the chant starts again and the chorus resumes. There is then a instrumental/dance break which goes into a bridge but this time we go straight into the chorus but the beat here is much more prominent. As the song reaches its crescendo the beat keeps on doubling after each line before coming to a stop on the final line.

The thing about this song is that it has a very clear identity - you can imagine the kind of urbanesque take on Ancient Egyptian culture and the stylised dancing a bit like in the video. But for me the song deteriorates as it continues. When the instrumentation and melody take centre stage is feels really interesting but as the song goes on the beat increases and gets stronger it almost loses its power and actually sounds quite annoying in the very final chorus. The tune is not that taxing so she should have been able to nail this well. However I cannot be the only person who find the chanting at the start of the chorus superfluous and to the point it feel like its been shoehorned in to give it another gimmick. This would have easily qualified but may have come across as gimmicky or too in your face when next to some of the more contemporary entries in the final.


Artist - Efendi
Song - Cleopatra
Composers - Luuk van Beers, Sarah Lake, Alan Roy Scott
Lyricists - Luuk van Beers, Sarah Lake, Alan Roy Scott

AZERBAIJAN

The Azeri act and song was revealed on March 8^th with the release of the fully entry online. Although the broadcaster had announced they were talking with a number of singers, nothing was released about the act or song until the published date. Singing for Azerbaijan is Chingiz with the song “Truth”.

The video starts with a shot of Chingiz plunging underwater. This is then intersperses with shots of different people in a range of quite outlandish costumes. The underwater theme is kept throughout at Chingiz sings a lot of the song in front of a water-effect light. Through the piece there are some very clear and strong lighting effects used and would work very well as a staging idea. There is no real narrative to the video so it will be interesting if they keep the stage concept more fluid or go with something that mirrors the song.

The song is an mid-tempo pop song whose beat is constant throughout the song but is stronger and more visible in the choruses. We start with a verse which leads into a pre-chorus. This part of the song feels like it goes on too long and it might be an idea to chop this down a little so we get to the chorus as soon as possible. The chorus has a chanting feel about it and feels a little bit angry but not enough to feel awkward. There is then a short instrumental where the ‘shut up’ part of the chorus is repeated. We go into another verse but this time leads straight into a chorus which feels much tighter than before. After the chorus instrumental there is a short interlude with distorted voices on it which could be interesting to recreate live! This then goes into the final chorus and instrumental before stopping.

As this is a video premiere there is little to see how well he can perform this live. It must be noted that there is a lot of ‘double singing’ going on i.e. two voices singing at the same time, which makes me wonder if there will be some very well trained and hidden backing singers helping along but this is just conjecture. The other odd concern is that the video from first note to last is 22 seconds too long. Maybe they will just truncate the intro or maybe omit one of the lines of the pre-chorus but this certainly seems a strange notion from an internal selection. Otherwise the song is very instant, very current and also very memorable. This would also not sound out of place on most mainstream radio stations.

Even though this has tough opposition in semi 2 I think this will easily qualify and is most definitely in the running for the win. Whether it wins or not will most certainly be down to presentation on the stage and how well Chingiz can do this live and I really hope he can.

ARTIST –  Chingiz

SONG –  Truth

MUSIC -  Borislav Milanov, Chingiz Mustafayev, Trey Campbell, Pablo Dinero, Hostess, Bo J

LYRICS - Borislav Milanov, Trey Campbell, Pablo Dinero, Hostess, Bo J