Phil’s Eurovision Countdown 2025 – Part 7/37 – Croatia

CROATIA – Poison Cake – Marko Bošnjak

In a bit of a turn up for the old books we have a non-Croat singing for Croatia, something that hasn’t happened in over a decade and, if you want to know where Marko is from, his surname gives you a massive clue (It’s Mostar in Bosnia, if you like your information spoon-fed).

Poison Cake is written in part by a friend of a friend – in fact a friend of someone whom I am sharing a house with in not-Switzerland in four weeks time, but that doesn’t mean I have to pull my punches here.

This song is, seemingly, nine ideas crocheted together. It starts out like it’s going to be a decent mid tempo song, then Marko discovers his hidden goth side, after he has sang the lyric “yum yum” in front of about sixteen people in a semi-final. From then on, the song develops its dark side… but, again with so many songs of this type, he doesn’t seem to go all in on the goth side for me in the way that Bambi Thug could, nor do I expect him to, but with that aforementioned crocheting of musical ideas and styles we get, almost by accident, a discordant song which seems to be perfect for Marko.

At DORA, I don’t think that particular staging concept helped Marko give the camera as many evils as he should give this song, and the girls prancing around him were, for me, an unnecessary nod to fill the stage… but I hope that they will revisit this because, if they do, then this song is dark enough to do reasonably well. It’s not a second-coming of Baby Lasagna type result, but in its own right, it should do OK. Also, it takes a certain person to sing in Alexis Carrington’s shoulder pads. He’s not that person, despite what he thinks!

Phil’s Score – 5 Points.