As much passion as a kick in the Balkans

Gjoko Tanevski - photo: Indrek Galetin (EBU)
Gjoko Tanevski - photo: Indrek Galetin (EBU)

And now we come to a country who are really hard to call when it comes to qualifying. The former thingy of there that shall not be mentioned any longer. They traditionally have pitched somewhere between 9-11 in most semi finals they’ve been in and just a tad lower in finals. Then the European Broadcasting Union invented a new rule called the “stop Macedonia qualifying rule” whereby only the top 9 countries in the semi automatically qualified and the 10th was chosen by juries something guaranteed to send Macedonia home on Friday. Now the EBU have made 50/50 jury and televoting compulsory in the semis too so you have to fear for our friends who have stolen their country name.

Personally this is one of my favourite songs but staging wise it’s a bit unremarkable. They try and introduce a bit of choreography to spice it up including girls clambering around our lead singers legs with about as much passion as a kick in the Balkans.

It’s hung parliament territory for the Macedonians. The voters of Europe clearly don’t want a Macedonian majority.

Phil: The country that dare not speak its name in public has very bad choreography. They just, for no determinable reasons known, they wander off stage and sit on steps. The song hasn’t grown on me at all to be honest. It’s still Derren Brown’s older brother singing at me with a rawk background. People seem to like it… I dont….

Sorry for the lack of this, its a bit hard to concentrate when you have some dumb-ass asking a 60 second question to the Portuguese who didn’t understand it, and neither did I! – I think he wanted them to sing fado every year!!

Nick: Whelmed, possibly as a result of raspberry and vanilla cake. Haven’t seen this one coming at all, but it’s really leaping out at me in this context. It’s a whirl of movement and activity, much of it in camera shot at the time, and it sounds good, and I’m ready for action again. Phew. Not a moment too soon.

I don’t think FYR Macedonia has surpassed 9th place in any senior level Eurovision event to date – this one looks well placed to beat that fairly easily in the semifinal at least.

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