The choice for Cyprus in 2021!
Elena is the first new artist for next May in Rotterdam and she also came along with the first song title, "El Diablo" (not that we will hear that yet, March is the projected reveal date). As far as I can remember, she wasn't one of the names rumoured to be in the running for singing for Cyprus - to be honest, she could have been and I would have forgotten, as almost every singer from Cyprus and Greece seemed to have been mentioned at some point! This was how we found out the news from CYBC:
Elena IS an experienced artist, having led the vocals for Otherview, a Greek group, for five years and then as a solo artist since 2018, her debut single being played on the show ("Pame Ap’ Tin Arhi"). She is also a TV veteran, having been a vocal coach and presenter on several Greek music shows. I have listened to a lot of her back catalogue and I am impressed with her vocals, together with her ability to sing ballads and uptempo tracks. Elena has not said much about what "El Diablo" sounds like, apart from that it 'is not a ballad, it is explosive' - we have a few months to wait until we find out what that means! Cyprus are continuing with what appears to be a similar Eurovision profile to what they gave us in 2018 (Eleni Foureira) and 2019 (Tamta) - Elena Tsagrinou is an exciting addition to the roster of 2021.
Lots there with most of the new releases at the start of the show this time, rather than the end:
"Pame Ap'Tin Arhi" - Elena Tsagrinou
"Want Ya" - Hurricane
"SWIPE" - Stefania and Rein van Duivenboden
"Wonderland" - ROXEN and Alexander Rybak
"On The Run" - Vincent Bueno
"Stay The Night" - Alcazar
"DNA" - Klara Hammarström
"Cool Vibes" - Vanilla Ninja
"Once In A Lifetime" - Ines
"Theater" - Katja Ebstein
"Tout Paris" - ZOË
"J'imagine" - Valentina
"Na Pamięć" - Alicja
"In Or Out" - Elina Born
"Heartbeat" - Justs
"Love Injected" - Aminata
"A-Ba-Ni-Bi" - Izhar Cohen & Alphabeta
"Alligator" - KaYra
"Nobody But You" - Cesár Sampson
"Home Again" - Sycamore Tree
"Do Lado da Razão" - Rui Bandeira
"Let Me Be The One" - The Shadows
The other item I said on the show that I would cover here was tying up the loose ends of JESC 2020, the biggest one being who won:
Bright and colourful with an imaginative backdrop, a visually engaging choreography with dancers that added to the visuals - this all meshed perfectly with Valentina who had a superb voice and was clearly super confident in front of the camera. As I said on the show, France crashed into my top three with this performance:
And in my opinion, it was an unqualified success!
I know that many fans will NOT like the format at all, as it did come across as a tv show, much like the live shows of The Voice or an Idol series. A lot of the spontaneity was lost as we only had the hosts and Polish special guests 'performing' live in the studio but that did mean that everything was incredibly slick, there were no technical glitches of any note (bar satellite delays with the delegations in their own nations) and every artist gave their absolute best performance - something that will stay with these young singers and will encourage them to keep singing. There has been some mutterings about playback with some of the entries - what was interesting was to hear comments by a sound engineer I know who had REALLY listened to some of the 'accused' entries. He indicated that they WERE all live but had the benefit of perfect backing tracks for the music and all of the vocals were polished to within an inch of their lives! It sounds as though the artists performing at Rotterdam 2021 who have to produce a live-on-tape version of their song should employ their nation's best sound engineer as part of their production team - it doesn't sound as though that would be infringing any regulations that the EBU have set out, at the moment at least. Whether that would be 'fair' to those nations without those contacts or resources is another matter. To be honest, Valentina is such an experienced live vocalist that she wouldn't need any perfecting of her vocals but such production techniques will annoy some fans, as having pre-recorded backing vocals and losing the orchestra has done!
- Announcing the 12 points from the juries first did keep the show running to time but I didn't take in any of the other scores at all before the next jury was up;
- The after show interview was a mess - normally the winner gets ushered to a press conference but it seemed as though nobody had thought about how to 'control' a delegation by satellite link;
- That TVP did not take the opportunity to let Alicja go to Rotterdam - it seemed the perfect time to do so, just before or after her song. The way the hosts said that this was her chance to sing a a major international event did NOT fill me with confidence that Alicja will get to sing for Poland next year.
Show 121 will have some big news in that we will know all of the Melodifestivalen acts, all the Eesti Laul songs and also those entries that are in the running for Eden Alene to sing in Israel (no logo for that, I'm afraid). We will also hear the next installment of Senhit's #freakytriptorotterdam and it is a very surprising source that has been made to sound almost Christmas like...
To be honest, if I hadn't already watched the video at
12.05am on December 1st, I would not have guessed the song!
Tune in next week to find out all about it...