Montenegro
Nina Žižić – Dobrodošli
Montenegro returns to the contest with Nina Žižić—a name Eurovision fans may remember from her high-camp cyborg guest vocal in 2013’s Igranka. This time, she’s solo and dialling it all the way down with Dobrodošli, a song that appears to have borrowed its entire emotional arc from the fourth coffee-fuelled cigarette of a bad Tuesday morning.
The preview video suggests the budget stretched to a fog machine and maybe half a ring light. Meanwhile, the mix has Nina’s voice so high and dry in the audio that it sounds like she’s just inhaled a multipack of Quavers and is hoping someone will bring her a glass of tap water before the chorus hits.
Musically, it’s a well-worn path: whispered verse, slightly less whispered pre-chorus, and then a thudding, overwrought chorus that sounds like it might have been lifted from a 2011 national final in Belarus. There’s drama, yes, but the kind of paint-by-numbers melodrama that Eurovision has seen—and swiftly forgotten—dozens of times before.
It doesn’t help that the structure barely makes it out of first gear. There’s one lonely verse, a chorus that crests too soon, and then a gradual descent into vaguely poetic moaning about the world’s woes before everything cuts dead with a theatrical pout. One can almost hear the dramatic outstretched arm. And the off-camera yawn.
This could have been something powerful—there’s a vocal lurking here that deserves more than mid-table melodrama—but as it stands, Dobrodošli is just another muted ballad that doesn’t quite land.
3 points