14/02/12 BELARUS

The Belarussian Final was held on February 14th at the Sports Palace in Minsk, hosted by Denis Kurian & Leyla Ismailova. Before the final there was a semi-final consisting of 15 songs.

Alena Naskaya won the ticket to Baku with her rendition of te ballad “All My Life” The song seems to be a very typical rock ballad which many of the Eastern European countries might send (in fact it sounds like a slower version of “Eyes than never lie”)

Alena is backed a male and female dancer and three violinists who sway back and forward – good job I am not prone to sea sickness. She does not really do very much herself and the whole set up is a little distracting, including her oddly cut dress. Her voice is not bad but her pronunciation is awful I think it took me a good few listens to realises that she is singing the whole song in English and not just the choruses.

This won’t bother a soul on the night.

SONG  - All my life

ARTIST – Alyona Lanskaya

COMPOSERS – Leonid Shirin, Yuri Vashchuk

LANGUAGE – English

11/02/12 HUNGARY

The Hungarian Final was held on February 11th at the MTV Studios in Budapest, hosted by Zsóka Kapócs & Gábor Gundel-Takács. Before the final there were 2 semi-finals where 20 songs were reduced to a final of 8.

Compact Disco was the winning act with their song “Sound of our hearts”. The song is a slow electronic ballad which seems to sound a bit like a Hurts song…. But not quite. The song itself is quite straightforward although the chorus is quite strong and memorable. The singer used an old fashioned microphone, probably as juxtaposition from the style of song, during the semi but it whistled a lot during the slower verse part, which did not work. Luckily he changed to a hand held mic in the final which worked much better.

There is not much performance to the song as the band seem to spend most of their time standing around playing their instruments. It is something when the visuals behind them are more interesting than the band themselves. Their dress sense also has much to be desired as they seem to have employed the same stylist as the Greek entry from 2002. They also *all* need a hairbrush and a good shave.

At least the song is different, and possibly on the progressive side but it will not be at all memorable enough to gain enough votes to progress this year.

SONG  - Sound of our hearts

ARTIST – Compact Disco

COMPOSERS – Walkó Csaba, Pál Gábor, Sándor Attila and Benham Lotfi.

LANGUAGE – English

11/02/12 ICELAND

The Icelandic Final was held on February 11th at Harpa Concert Hall in Reykjavik, hosted by Brynja Þorgeirsdóttir & Páll Óskar Hjálmtýsson. Before the final there were 3 semis with 5 songs. The winner was chosen by televoting (50%) and an "expert" jury (50%).

The winning song was a duet between Greta Salóme & Jón Jósep (also known as Jonsi, who represented Iceland in 2004) with the song “Mundu eftir mér” (Remember Me). The song is very dramatic and old fashioned. It has a very nice folkey quality to it, almost Celticly medieval in its tune like a Troubadour singing a madrigal on his lute. Jonsi sings whilst Greta, who also penned the song,  sings and plays the violin. The songs grows as it progresses getting ever so slightly rocker.

The performance is a little stilted although I feel with a bigger stage they might be able to move more and interact more with each other and the audience. They are also backed by 4 solid backing singers, one of which has the biggest ginger beard I have seen in a long time – they need to make more of this fact !!!

On reflection I think the song is interesting – and it will be interesting to see if they stay in Icelandic or not – but I don’t think it is a winner… possibly not even a qualifier.

SONG  - Mundu eftir mér (Remember Me)

ARTIST – Gréta Salóme & Jónsi

COMPOSER – Gréta Salóme

LANGUAGE – Icelandic

11/02/12 NORWAY

The

The Norwegian Final was held on February 11th at the Spektrum in Oslo, hosted by Marte Stokstad & Per Sundnes. Previous to the final, there were 3 semi-finals consisting of 8 songs each.

The final was won by the song “Stay” sung by Tooji. The song itself sounds very current and could easily be heard on the radio waves of Europe. Although its sound is very Western in its production the addition of some Eastern style elements in the backing track as well as some of the choreography (which also complement his background) will widen its appeal.

The performance is quite clever. It seems like a very active performance from the singer, however on closer looking Tooji barely moves from the spot. It seems like they have looked and learnt from Eric Saade’s performance from last year and produced a version of the song that can actually be performed and sung without spoiling the vocal. Not too sure about the excess smoke at the end…

All in all I think this is a very good song choice by the Norwegians, a solid chance of qualifying but possibly not an overall winner.

SONG  - Stay

ARTIST – Tooji

COMPOSERS – Tooji Keshtkar, Peter Boström and Figge Boström

LANGUAGE – English



Eponymous

The podcast is here!!! All the songs have people's names (real or fictional) in their title

You can download or listen to it here http://www.archive.org/details/Eponymous


Click here to listen to this podcast in your usual music player (M3U Playlist)

04/02/12 MALTA

The Maltese Final was held on February 4th at the Malta Fairs & Convention Centre in Ta' Qali, hosted by Ronald Briffa & Elaine Saliba. Before the final there was a semi-final, where the cast of  24was reduced to a final of 16. The winner was chosen by an "expert" jury (6/8) and televoting (2/8).  The eventual winner was Kurt Calleja and “This is the night” after a dingdong battle with seemingly perpertual runner up, Claudia Faniello.

Kurt is joined on stage by  a static drummer, 2 guitarists (who also do some backing dancing and singing), a DJ/dancer and a female backing singer. The song, like last year, is an uptempo dance number. Kurt has a very strange voice, almost operatic in places and at times doesn't fit the song. That said his voice is nice and clear and seems to cope really well singing the song live. Kurt also does a very annoying stamping dance routine during the 'oh-oh-oh' bit at the end of the chorus, which is also copied by his guitarists. Is this really the best of Maltese choreogaphy? If so I'm on the next plane to Valetta to share my degree level skills! He commands the stage quite well but the whole act is a little stiff and needs some sprucing and freshening up before May.

The song has quite a striaghtforward structure and has its fair share of earworms. It sound like several different songs (Usher, JLS and Ed Sheeran are just three examples) I don't think it is a bad song, or a bad performance but it does seem a little dated and amateurish. They really need to push the earworms and get people to remember those parts and get them addicted. Otherwise it will be another DNQ.

SONG  - This is the night

ARTIST – Kurt Calleja

COMPOSERS – Johan Jämtberg, Kurt Calleja and Mikael Gunnerås

LANGUAGE – English

29/01/12 FRANCE

The French entry, like the past few years, was internally selected.

It was revealed many months ago that Anggun, a French-Indonesian singer, would sing the song in a mixture of French and English. On 29th of January the song was released online. No proper video as yet, just clips of her in the studio.  William Rosseau and Jean Pierre Pilot are the writers of the song whilst Veronica Ferraro, well recognised for her collaboration with David Guetta, was in charge of sound mixing.

I have to say that even after four or five listens of the song - I am confused. What exactly I am confused about is also confusing.... You confused yet?!?!!

The song starts of quite slow and rocky and then slowly ratchets up to its proper speed. Angunn has an intersting voice although it sounds like she's really straining to get those high notes.The songs itself is quite good and has lots of separate parts and section that get inside your head.  The mixture of English and French works well and the choruses are quite memorable. Will be intersting to see if they wake a big thing about the whistling in the background....

I think my unsureness about the track comes from the music. It seems to stop, start, quicken up, slow down, chop and change too much for my liking. It gives it that feeling like there is no continuity, at one point I wan't sure if or when the song was going to end as ech time I thought I was changing to finish it would change again ! Will be interesting to find out which part of the song they use for the voting clip.

Obviously, more will be revealed once it is sung live and I will be very interested to see how the song is made into a show for Eurovision !

SONG  - Echo (You and I)

ARTIST – Anggun

COMPOSERS – Anggun, William Rousseau, Jean-Pierre Pilot

LANGUAGE – French/English

Last but not least

It's podcast time again !


This week we have a range of songs that came bottom of the leaderboard - and don't worry they are not all Norwegian - in fact I made a point of not playing not even one!!!


You can download or listen to it here http://www.archive.org/details/LastButNotLeastEsc


Click here to listen to this podcast in your usual music player (M3U Playlist)

Dancing !

So here is this week's podcast -  all about song that make you dance !

Advanced warning  (and apologies) to all the Lithuanians and Swedes out there !!!

You can download or listen to it here http://www.archive.org/details/DancingEsc

Click here to listen to this podcast in your usual music player (M3U Playlist)

25/01/12 CYPRUS

The Cypriot Final wias held on January 25th at the PIK TV Studios in Nicosia, hosted by Christos Grigoriades. Ivi Adamou was internally selected by CYBC and sung all 3 songs. The winner was be chosen by a mixture of an "expert" jury (50%) and televoting (50%)

The show itself was far too long and strung out A 2 hour show to present 3 badly mimed songs? I don’t think so ! The selection was won by the pre-contest favourite “La La Love” – unfortunately not a song about appreciation for a certain Teletubbies character…

The song itself if a very bubbly, dancy song with a ‘la la la’ style chorus which of course is incredibly catchy OR incredibly annoying, depending on your point of view. Some could say it is quite a stereotypical Eurovision entry with a nonsense chorus.

Unfortunately, Ivi did not sing any of her entries live or have a full proper staging, therefore it is almost impossible to give a pointed critique of he chance in Baku. Her dress during the selection process was not particularly nice looking OR flattering and I hope she can come up with something a bit more fun and inspiring. Her dancing was a little raw, sometimes uncomfortable and OTT at times and the whole thing could have benefitted from some dancers. I really don’t have much confidence in her live singing ability, this is also furthered by the fact that the track seems very heavy in autotuning and production. I get the feeling that not only will she need dancers but may also need some good solid backing singers.

So in general, I am not particularly impressed by the song or the performance and just hope that this entry steps up its game before May.

SONG  - La La Love

ARTIST – Ivi Adamou

COMPOSERS - Alex Papaconstantinou, Björn Djupström, Alexandra Zakka, Viktor Svensson

LANGUAGE – English