For this, we've been waiting until 18th March? More reminiscent of the Mighty Boosh character Rudi van Disarzio, Artsvik (remember her from before Christmas, winning Depi Evratesil in Armenia?) has supplied us with a hairdo that even outranks Tako from Georgia! Was this going to be the power ballad that I was expecting, given that every week she played to her vocal strengths and gave us one of them after the other, or would this kick into something unexpectedly uptempo? We now all know the answer to that one - for me, more pleasingly perhaps, is that we finally have all 43 entries in place, each with an official video to look at. Of course, more importantly than that:
I now have a top 43!
Where will the artists with the big hair come on my list? Where will the diverse nature come from that "Celebrate Diversity" was crying out for when we seemed to have nothing but ballads to listen to? I have come to my list using two methods...
- I have been on the SECHUK Jury yet again and provided my instant opinions on each entry as it had been released, scoring from 0.5 up to 10 (no-one got those extremes, although there was a BIG difference between my first place and number 43); and
- Using those scores, I then played with the Mr. Gerbear's Eurovision 2017 Favorites sorter! An excellent bit of kit that really helps when you are trying to decide between four entries that all scored 6.0 for instance. That sorted my list as of 18th March 2017, after all 43 entries had been revealed but before a lot of them had been seen live.
Now I could just supply a playlist of my choices or a clever recap video but as I have been really slacking this season, covering hardly any NFs or giving opinions on many of the entries, I felt it is only right to summarise my thoughts on all the entries here (okay, over the next few posts, otherwise this will end up being as long as my Eesti Laul article). Remember this is all based on the footage seen to date from NFs and official videos - I tend to give more credit to those that excel live in their selection processes but I am hopeful that all of the 'studio versions' will translate to stage well.
Having said all that, I'm going to start with the bottom of my list, at number 43, with a vocal genre I absolutely detest...
43. Romania
That style I cannot stand? Yodelling! I can understand why it is necessary to use it in practice for communication across hills and vast distances but I struggle to work out why it has been incorporated into a song in 2017. The yodelling Country and Western song (the big popular musical genre to incorporate this hideous form of vocal) really died out in the 1950s and I wish it had stayed that way, although I have to admit that I have always liked this hit from Frank Ifield, who utilised a very mild form of the yodel in a gentle and pleasant way:
Measured, calm, an alternative to a vibrato - totally understandable why he sung like that. Another good example of yodelling in pop music is "The Lion Sleeps Tonight". It has its basis from a Zulu song "Mbube" ("Lion") and that works because it is not obviously 'traditional yodelling' or 'yodelling for yodelling' sake:
"Yodel It!" on the other hand, which is trying to be just that? It makes my ears ring! Alex Florea's rap/rock is okay and would ordinarily set Ilinca up for her segments of the song nicely, sections that would complement his musical style but it just doesn't gel for me. Her 'normal' singing voice later in the song is great and she obviously has a superb vocal range but as the yodelling really pierces through my head, I just cannot bear to listen to this too often in a short space of time. You know what the other annoying thing about this entry is?
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Ilinca is stunningly attractive and there is a strong possibility that she will end up in Eurovision Beauty...but that would mean I'd have to attach this song to her entry. Oh, what a twisted web Eurovision weaves...
Having said all this, this is possibly the ultimate Marmite song in Kyiv - fans are either like me and have it down near the bottom of their list whereas lots of others have it in their top ten. On the positives for this entry, Ilinca and Alex both look good, interact well on stage, have an excellent routine going and it is all very watchable. I fully suspect that I will have to put up with this twice in Kyiv as it is totally unique and stands out a mile from the rest of the pack in SF2 - I wouldn't be surprised if it displaces one of my favourites on the night. As for personal preference though, I gave this 1.5/10 when scoring for the SECHUK Jury - my lowest ever score in three years! There is a certain irony this year though - this Romanian entry contains a style of communication and singing associated with Switzerland whereas the Swiss entry is by a group that has two members from Romania...
Anyway, enough of my bile about my least favourite song this year, onto my number 42 and the ultimate in split personalities...
42. Croatia
Having watched the official video, you might be wondering why this is so low on my list - the premise visually is a bit like a 2017 arty version of the classic Bob Dylan video of "Subterranean Homesick Blues", where Bob flicks the cards away as each line is sung. The video above is very stylish and pleasing to watch with the lyrics being painted or drawn onto various artistic materials and brings an 'ah' moment at the end:
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Unfortunately that is where the goodness in this song stops for me! Where do I start with "My Friend"? Visually, Jacques is an imposing figure:
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With that image in my mind, I can imagine the classical operatic segments of this entry coming out of his mouth. What I cannot visualise are the parts where Michael Jackson and an X Factor winner are on stage with him because I can hear two other vocals in there too. And the fans following every twist and turn of the build-up to Kyiv will already know this but I have to mention it for completeness..
Put that together with the fact that "My Friends" sounds like a small scale charity record on par with "Feed The World" and that there are some mad strings in there too for good measure, this is coming across as a comedy piece at best, a complete hot mess at worst. As an aside, I am sort of hoping that Ana Rucner is involved somehow in those strings, given my fondness for her work, but then again I'm not sure she'd want to be knocked out of Eurovision at the SF stage again twice in a row. UK fans with long memories will remember the comic genius that was Tommy Cooper - he had a couple of sketches with him pretending to be two separate people and being dressed accordingly:
This is how "My Friends" is playing in my head but in song - Jacques dressed as an opera singer on one side, 'pop attire' on the other, then I wake up from my nightmare! I suspect that he will 'play this straight', just singing on stage and swapping into vocal style when needed without a pause for breath. In a way this will be one to watch if for no other reason to marvel how one singer can seamlessly change from a pop singing voice to an operatic one. It will stand out in Kyiv, there is no doubt about that, but probably for the wrong reasons - the spectacle of how this guy sings will have people going 'wow' but not doing any more than that and my 3.5/10 score on the SECHUK Jury will match how this does in May - one show on Thursday but no more. At least we'll always have the cute dog...
Okay, moving on from my bottom two who have definite reasons for being down where there are in my eyes to number 41, which is there just because it's all a bit, well, meh...
41. Slovenia
As a male balladeer in Kyiv, Omar should be standing out a mile with "On My Way" and Slovenia might realistically be looking to return to the Eurovision Final after a year's absence due to ManuElla's 'Phoebe Bouffay' act (you'll need to look back to my 2016 comments to get that reference). He has a look that appeals to many (apart from the golden glove, you aren't Michael Jackson, Omar):
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And there is no question that he has a great voice (powerful and clear, loads of emotion in his delivery) but the problem is with the material he has been given to sing. "On My Way" is dull, uninspiring and forgettable almost bar by bar as this crawls its way towards the three minute mark and even the attempt at a climax doesn't really come off. Its music and lyrical content sound perfect for Eurovision past, where a lovely ballad sung well was always guaranteed to make it into the top ten of the Final. The reason for that? This sort of entry was competing with others of its kind and a great voice set you apart - this now sounds TOO retro, if that is possible, too old school. I'm going to use Poland from last year as a comparison:
Even though "Color Of Your Life" sounded like an entry from 20-30 years ago, there was something about its execution, its look and bizarrely its 'freshness' that set it apart and gave it that 'X Factor' (corny, I know). Slovenia 2017 is just nice, pleasant and totally wallpaper - I cannot see any possibility of this getting votes from the public in SF1 and I don't see this as anything exceptional enough to get jurors interested either. Overall a bland, bland song - it got 3.5/10 for the SECHUK Jury from me and only just had my nod over 'split voiced' Croatia. I would have this currently bottom of SF1.
From a very forgettable ballad to my lowest of the Big 5 - repeating your song title endlessly might have worked 49 years ago for this country but not in 2017...
40. Spain
I am all for a Eurovision entry that has removed as much of the 'bells and whistles' from its production as possible - only guitar, drums and a bit of synth here. The issue I have with "Do It For Your Lover" is that this entry has stripped almost all lyrical content from the three minutes as well - I'm not a great fan of repeating the same lines of a song over and over and over again. It's almost as if 1968 is repeating itself - the 'word' La repeated 138 times might have won Eurovision then (still can't understand how "Congratulations" lost out on the night but I'm sure that royalties-wise Sir Cliff, Bill and Phil aren't really that fussed) but using "Lo" as part of the word "Love" in this song 140 times is almost certain to fail in Kyiv 2017. Manel has got a certain cheeky 'beach-bum' charm about him:
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He can sing well live (admittedly what he has to sing isn't that complex) and the NF performance definitely was an enjoyable one to watch, if very basic in its staging. The main reason why Spain is so low in my listing this year is, much like Slovenia, the song itself - the sheer repetitive nature of "Do It For Your Lover" drives me to distraction and my mind and attention shuts off after the first minute (if it really makes it that far). This will be a chilled interlude somewhere down the listing in the Final in Kyiv but I fully expect it to be before or after one of the uptempo favourites in whichever half of the draw that Manel gets put in. I would not be surprised to see this bottom five as the credits roll at the end of ESC 2017, maybe even bottom and all of that was why it got 4.0/10 from me. And to think that Spain and Barei were one of my favourites last year...
Onto my number 39 - I think that this nation have really 'dropped the ball' and are risking their first Final DNQ (unless you include 1996, pedant).
39. Russia
Now there was speculation pre-season at times that either Russia were going to send someone on the stratospheric level of Sergey Lazarev to go all out and win this year or pull out entirely at the last minute. Having listened to "Flame Is Burning" and having now read about when Yuliya was 'offered the gig' (end of February), this all sounds very rushed through in double quick time. Yuliya herself is a class act - she sung at the Opening Ceremony of the Winter Paralympics in Sochi 2014:
So she can handle a huge crowd, an international broadcast audience and is able to sing beautifully in Russian. At the moment, however, it is quite obvious that she is having to sing this song phonetically in English and it really, really shows. As she moves through to the chorus, the sound of this does improve but the extraordinarily slow pace of this ballad does make this a strain to keep any interest going. We have had only the one showing of this entry which was within a Russian news program, I think, and it shows Yuliya in her wheelchair, singing to the crowd:
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There have been a lot of fans who have put their views forward that the only reason she 'got the gig' is to stop Russia being booed in Kyiv. I think that if Russia were that concerned then they would have sent Sergey again, as his 'on stage persona' seemed to accomplish that very well in front of the Stockholm crowd last year. I have said before that artists shouldn't be booed for the 'sins of their leaders', as I feel that it has no impact on the people that matter and looks petty and boorish, especially when in past Contests the only result is two 17 year old sisters and a beautiful women ending up crying on television. The fact that Yuliya has the need to be in a wheelchair does not make her more complicit in what Vladimir Putin does on a day-to-day basis and she shouldn't be booed anyway, disability or no. What her being in a wheelchair does mean is that staging opportunities are extremely limited - using the only other experience of a wheelchair user on a Eurovision stage as a guide for Kyiv, there was little that Monika Kuszyńska could do on stage apart from (putting it bluntly and not necessarily in a PC way) 'sit there and sing':
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Everything depended on the strength of the song and her ability to emote the song's message across to the voters at home - at the moment I don't think that Yuliya singing "Flame Is Burning" the way it came across in the official video will match Poland's Final qualification in Vienna. I see this being the year that Russia fails to make the Final - would that be a massive shock for everyone, especially with it happening in Ukraine, of all places? This is one entry that will have to improve a lot in Kyiv - at the moment it gained a 4.5/10 when I scored it for SECHUK and is down at my lowly 39...
I'm going to pause for breath after these first five entries, given that I'm going from my least favourite to most over the course of the 43. Hopefully it's not all coming across as super negative so far - I have tried to see the best in these five entries but they really, really do the least for me this year. At least it is only one entry that really goes through my head but I could see "Yodel It!" easily making the Final and tormenting me all over again on the Saturday night! Out of the four in the SFs, Romania is the only one I can currently see making it through whereas the others are likely to fade into oblivion (Spain helping to prop up the Final table). As for the next installment of five, I'll give you a clue as to who will be up next time...
Have fun deciphering those...
Having said all that, I'm going to start with the bottom of my list, at number 43, with a vocal genre I absolutely detest...
43. Romania
That style I cannot stand? Yodelling! I can understand why it is necessary to use it in practice for communication across hills and vast distances but I struggle to work out why it has been incorporated into a song in 2017. The yodelling Country and Western song (the big popular musical genre to incorporate this hideous form of vocal) really died out in the 1950s and I wish it had stayed that way, although I have to admit that I have always liked this hit from Frank Ifield, who utilised a very mild form of the yodel in a gentle and pleasant way:
Measured, calm, an alternative to a vibrato - totally understandable why he sung like that. Another good example of yodelling in pop music is "The Lion Sleeps Tonight". It has its basis from a Zulu song "Mbube" ("Lion") and that works because it is not obviously 'traditional yodelling' or 'yodelling for yodelling' sake:
"Yodel It!" on the other hand, which is trying to be just that? It makes my ears ring! Alex Florea's rap/rock is okay and would ordinarily set Ilinca up for her segments of the song nicely, sections that would complement his musical style but it just doesn't gel for me. Her 'normal' singing voice later in the song is great and she obviously has a superb vocal range but as the yodelling really pierces through my head, I just cannot bear to listen to this too often in a short space of time. You know what the other annoying thing about this entry is?
Having said all this, this is possibly the ultimate Marmite song in Kyiv - fans are either like me and have it down near the bottom of their list whereas lots of others have it in their top ten. On the positives for this entry, Ilinca and Alex both look good, interact well on stage, have an excellent routine going and it is all very watchable. I fully suspect that I will have to put up with this twice in Kyiv as it is totally unique and stands out a mile from the rest of the pack in SF2 - I wouldn't be surprised if it displaces one of my favourites on the night. As for personal preference though, I gave this 1.5/10 when scoring for the SECHUK Jury - my lowest ever score in three years! There is a certain irony this year though - this Romanian entry contains a style of communication and singing associated with Switzerland whereas the Swiss entry is by a group that has two members from Romania...
Anyway, enough of my bile about my least favourite song this year, onto my number 42 and the ultimate in split personalities...
42. Croatia
Having watched the official video, you might be wondering why this is so low on my list - the premise visually is a bit like a 2017 arty version of the classic Bob Dylan video of "Subterranean Homesick Blues", where Bob flicks the cards away as each line is sung. The video above is very stylish and pleasing to watch with the lyrics being painted or drawn onto various artistic materials and brings an 'ah' moment at the end:
All the voices are coming out of the same man!
Put that together with the fact that "My Friends" sounds like a small scale charity record on par with "Feed The World" and that there are some mad strings in there too for good measure, this is coming across as a comedy piece at best, a complete hot mess at worst. As an aside, I am sort of hoping that Ana Rucner is involved somehow in those strings, given my fondness for her work, but then again I'm not sure she'd want to be knocked out of Eurovision at the SF stage again twice in a row. UK fans with long memories will remember the comic genius that was Tommy Cooper - he had a couple of sketches with him pretending to be two separate people and being dressed accordingly:
This is how "My Friends" is playing in my head but in song - Jacques dressed as an opera singer on one side, 'pop attire' on the other, then I wake up from my nightmare! I suspect that he will 'play this straight', just singing on stage and swapping into vocal style when needed without a pause for breath. In a way this will be one to watch if for no other reason to marvel how one singer can seamlessly change from a pop singing voice to an operatic one. It will stand out in Kyiv, there is no doubt about that, but probably for the wrong reasons - the spectacle of how this guy sings will have people going 'wow' but not doing any more than that and my 3.5/10 score on the SECHUK Jury will match how this does in May - one show on Thursday but no more. At least we'll always have the cute dog...
Okay, moving on from my bottom two who have definite reasons for being down where there are in my eyes to number 41, which is there just because it's all a bit, well, meh...
41. Slovenia
As a male balladeer in Kyiv, Omar should be standing out a mile with "On My Way" and Slovenia might realistically be looking to return to the Eurovision Final after a year's absence due to ManuElla's 'Phoebe Bouffay' act (you'll need to look back to my 2016 comments to get that reference). He has a look that appeals to many (apart from the golden glove, you aren't Michael Jackson, Omar):
Even though "Color Of Your Life" sounded like an entry from 20-30 years ago, there was something about its execution, its look and bizarrely its 'freshness' that set it apart and gave it that 'X Factor' (corny, I know). Slovenia 2017 is just nice, pleasant and totally wallpaper - I cannot see any possibility of this getting votes from the public in SF1 and I don't see this as anything exceptional enough to get jurors interested either. Overall a bland, bland song - it got 3.5/10 for the SECHUK Jury from me and only just had my nod over 'split voiced' Croatia. I would have this currently bottom of SF1.
From a very forgettable ballad to my lowest of the Big 5 - repeating your song title endlessly might have worked 49 years ago for this country but not in 2017...
40. Spain
I am all for a Eurovision entry that has removed as much of the 'bells and whistles' from its production as possible - only guitar, drums and a bit of synth here. The issue I have with "Do It For Your Lover" is that this entry has stripped almost all lyrical content from the three minutes as well - I'm not a great fan of repeating the same lines of a song over and over and over again. It's almost as if 1968 is repeating itself - the 'word' La repeated 138 times might have won Eurovision then (still can't understand how "Congratulations" lost out on the night but I'm sure that royalties-wise Sir Cliff, Bill and Phil aren't really that fussed) but using "Lo" as part of the word "Love" in this song 140 times is almost certain to fail in Kyiv 2017. Manel has got a certain cheeky 'beach-bum' charm about him:
Onto my number 39 - I think that this nation have really 'dropped the ball' and are risking their first Final DNQ (unless you include 1996, pedant).
39. Russia
Now there was speculation pre-season at times that either Russia were going to send someone on the stratospheric level of Sergey Lazarev to go all out and win this year or pull out entirely at the last minute. Having listened to "Flame Is Burning" and having now read about when Yuliya was 'offered the gig' (end of February), this all sounds very rushed through in double quick time. Yuliya herself is a class act - she sung at the Opening Ceremony of the Winter Paralympics in Sochi 2014:
So she can handle a huge crowd, an international broadcast audience and is able to sing beautifully in Russian. At the moment, however, it is quite obvious that she is having to sing this song phonetically in English and it really, really shows. As she moves through to the chorus, the sound of this does improve but the extraordinarily slow pace of this ballad does make this a strain to keep any interest going. We have had only the one showing of this entry which was within a Russian news program, I think, and it shows Yuliya in her wheelchair, singing to the crowd:
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I'm going to pause for breath after these first five entries, given that I'm going from my least favourite to most over the course of the 43. Hopefully it's not all coming across as super negative so far - I have tried to see the best in these five entries but they really, really do the least for me this year. At least it is only one entry that really goes through my head but I could see "Yodel It!" easily making the Final and tormenting me all over again on the Saturday night! Out of the four in the SFs, Romania is the only one I can currently see making it through whereas the others are likely to fade into oblivion (Spain helping to prop up the Final table). As for the next installment of five, I'll give you a clue as to who will be up next time...
Long Braids A-Swinging...
I Like Your Red Mac...
It Was Christmas Eve, Babe...
Rise Like A Phoenix-lite...
Is It Love or Strong Woman Against the world?
Have fun deciphering those...