22/01/12 TURKEY

The Turkish entry was revealed on Wednesday 22^nd February during a special broadcast on TRT. It

was revealed many weeks ago that the Turkish broadcasters had internally selected Can Bonomo to represent them in Baku. Here he revealed the track he'll perform at Eurovision, “Love me back”

Oh dear.

The song is extremely disjointed, it starts off in quite a traditional epic way then becomes quite a jolly mid tempo number with strange dramatic interludes inserted for very little reason (or effect). His voice is ok however his pronunciation needs a lot of work and during the quick parts you really cannot make out what he is saying. The lyrics of the song are very figurative yet in some ways are nonsensical, especially the “nani nani naaaaaa” parts

Can delivered this performance vocally by himself (although he was obviously miming) and spent a lot of time dancing around, including messing about with his cloak. At points he looked like a a very poor "Stars in you eyes" contestant trying to be Ben Volpeliere-Pierrot from Curiosity Killed The Cat....This said, he was backed by quite a full orchestra of traditional instruments whose payers joined him on the stage near the end of the song. This was a very simple performance and it will be interesting to se how this is expanded and improved for May.

As Can was miming it is hard to give a full critique but I am really not impressed by this song and feel that on so many levels it is weak and will not stand out. That said – this *is* Turkey so could just scrape through to make it to Saturday’s final.

SONG  -  Love me back

ARTIST – Can Bonomo

COMPOSER – Can Bonomo

LANGUAGE – English

UPDATE 5

More news and videos !

MALTA -The official video came out this week. The vocal and background of the song has changed very little but I think that the video is very clever. Shame that such enthusiasm and message cannot be relayed onto the ESC stage.




SAN MARINO – As partially previewed in the TV presentation, Senit has released a video for “Stand By” It was filmed in a very snowy San Marino, which is a bit strange for a summer song contest!




ICELAND – Firstly, the boys have decided to sing their entry in English – which I am a little disappointed at. The song is now “Coming Home” and a video for this new version was realised this week.




NETHERLANDS – Like Iceland, 3JS will be singing in English. The video for “Never Alone” can be found below.




POLAND – Magdalena has released an English version of “Jestem” called “First class ticket to heaven”. However, due to a poor reception of the song, it has been confirmed that she will be singing in Polish in Germany.




UKRAINE – The controversial winner of the pre-selection, Mika Newton, has released an official video of her song, to be sung in English, “Angel”




FYROM – Vlatko has been very busy in the studio. As well a the Macedonian version, he has been working on an English, Russian and Serbo-Croat version on his song “Rusinska”, however it looks like he will be signing the original Macedonian version during Eurovision. His new video clip of the song is below.




TURKEY – The internally selected Yüksek Sadakat have finally released their video clip of “Live it up” I think the video clip re-affirms that their show at Eurovision will not be much of a ‘show’

TURKEY

The Turkish song was presented on the 25th February during a televised press conference. As was announced some time ago, rock band Yüksek Sadakat had been internally selected by TRT and the song they will be singing is “Live It Up”

The song is disco type rock song with a very strong drum beat and guitar riff. The verses are not that memorable but the choruses have a good clapable beat with a nice string section. I found myself singing the tune of “All day and all of the night” by the Kinks through out most of the song. Although the song is called “Live it up” – that phrases is not always noticeable in the chorus. Nearer the end there is a frankly pointless use of Turkish drums and percussion – which I think is just there to remind people this is the Turkish song.

The presentation of the song is very plain. The singer is I the middle of the stage with two guitarists a keyboard player and a drummer. They five of them basically stay quite static for the whole performance which is very unmemorable. It needs to more movement and colour and possibly will need some more engaging with the audience in the area and the audience at home.

After a run of some very good (if not always deserved results) this song is very disappointing and should not get out of the semi-final on merit.


SINGER – Yüksek Sadakat
SONG – Live It Up
MUSIC – Kutlu Özmakinacı
WORDS – Ergün Arsal