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Strobe Lights by Red Sebastian
I had a cracking time when I went to the Belgian final a couple of years ago, the time Gustaph was a surprise winner. I was at the Benidorm Fest this year so couldn’t watch Belgium live but the winner seemed more certain in advance. In fact, despite what I thought were a decent set of songs in their audio version, the performances largely didn’t deliver, making Red Sebastian an even surer winner.
This is a fast-paced dance track, building into a heady blend of beats and flashing lights that’s quite intoxicating. Lyrically it captures the excitement of falling in love with a side-interpretation of the joy of a drug-fucked night in the club. The video uses a visual metaphor of an out-of-control elevator to depict the disorientation, fashioning Red – or is it Sebastian? – into some fetish-adjacent shiny PVC.
I really like this. It’s evocative of some of the nights of my youth and I know that if you threw enough cider and maybe a couple of Jägerbombs down me I’d be as close as I’d ever now get to losing myself completely in the thrill of this at 3am in the EuroClub. But I just don’t know if that’s going to connect enough to a diverse TV audience.
Maybe it’s my advancing age (see also: Albania) but Sebastian – or is it Red? – looks a little too young to be belting out a clubland anthem in an almost-kinky outfit, even though on researching I find he’ll actually be performing this in the semi-final on his 25th birthday, easily old enough to have been caning it for years. My lack of awareness as to what’s in the actual hit parade (as opposed to the fantasy Eurovision one that lives in my head) also means I don’t really know whether this sounds modern or dated.
But perhaps Red Sebastian’s greater challenge is the genre itself. Dance can be notoriously difficult to stage at Eurovision, as Belgum itself is painfully aware with fan-favourite Xandee crashing and burning in 2004. The gamblers among us have him in the top 10, something I’d be happy to see, but I equally wouldn’t be surprised to see this missing out entirely.
My marks: 10 points
Photo: Taike de Wilde/EBU