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Azerbaijan
Magagama – Run with you
Magagama (not, as it turns out, a Pokémon evolution) offers up a track that’s equal parts time-travelling synth nostalgia and Eurovision pop alchemy. There’s an unmistakable whiff of 80s Casio keyboard optimism, laced with 90s electro-funk squelch, and all of it gets draped in a faintly perplexing song structure that seems to actively avoid doing anything too soon. Verse, pre-chorus, pre-pre-chorus, spiritual warm-up to the chorus—it’s a full minute in before the actual hook kicks down the door and announces itself.
Vocally, it’s gloriously slippery—non-binary in the best sense, with a timbre that shifts from sultry to celestial without ever settling. The track flirts with cultural signposting too, dropping in some tastefully deployed ethnic instrumentation that suggests this could be from Azerbaijan, but could just as easily be an early Robyn B-side with an oud solo stitched in.
The real tragedy here is that the chorus—the one truly memorable part—is given barely thirty seconds of airtime, like a dazzling guest star who turns up too late in the episode to save the plot. Still, for all its structural excess and try-hard shimmer, Run With You is exactly the kind of slick, pan-Euro bop that will glide into the final with barely a flick of eyeliner out of place.
8 points