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AUSTRIA – Wasted Love – JJ
“Let’s put a song into the contest that is similar to last year’s winner” never goes down well, but that seems to have been the first thought in the jury’s mind at ORF when they listened to this and put it through the internal selection process. ( Apart from TV’s Lisa-Jayne Lewis, naturally).
I think the hype around this song, at time of writing this review, is precisely because it sounds like The Code in many people’s brains and as that won last year well, this must be winning as well yes?
Well no, actually, it isn’t going to win. Make no mistake though it is a good song in many respects. It’s technically a very difficult song to sing and, by extension, listen to and begs the question that I never thought I’d ever ask. “Is it too complicated for a televote only semi final?” JJ has a unique voice, unique to the point of bordering on grating when the first chorus falsetto kicks in and then annoys me some more at the denouement of the song just when you expect it to build it seems to stay at one level for the last 45 seconds or so.
I don’t know who this is actually aimed at in it’s Semi Final. It’s certainly not squarely aimed at those televoters cos this doesn’t have anything “entertaining” to hang a viewers eyes on apart from appealing to the viewers sense of “Everyone says this is a good song so it must be”. It’s got a job on its hands in that second semi final because at least eight songs are in a position to get a significant proportion of televotes. Once you remove the obvious, you have everyone else scrapping for two places and there are arguments to place two songs above this.
Should it get out of the bloodbath, however, in the final those juries who are told to appreciate a good song get a say and they could well elevate this song by looking at the complexities of the melody and the lyrics and marking it up for that. I just don’t know if it’s going to get there.
Phil’s score – 5 Points.
Popera doesn’t do well in Eurovision. The best result to date in this genre still remains 3rd in 2015. Other attempts, some of them were pre-contest favorites, simply failed to delivered.
The song has been written to show JJ vocal capabilities but in the process, the writers of the song forgot to have some proper structure to the song, and when the beat kick in it just a WTF moment because it just coming from nowhere and with no relation to what happened before in the song.
If you look at the betting odds, this song is 2nd to win the whole thing and I really struggle to see who is going to vote for this, especially in all televote semi, where there are no professional juries to give this a push in the back that will get him to the final.
Right now it’s more a shock no qualifier than a song that can go all the way fro a win.
1 point( and only for the vocals)