Phil’s Eurovision countdown – Part 2/37 – Armenia

Survivor – Parg

Ahhh yes, the first in a growing number of songs that “the fans” on Twitter/X have decided to dislike for whatever-the-reason-is-at-this-minute.

I’ve got to declare an interest here- PARG was the only act I cared about in the Armenian national final cos he was the fittest,  so he could be singing the phone book and I’d think it was ace. However, whilst he is singing this song, I have to wonder which 1980s imported TV show he’s been watching to get his accent. It’s clearly edging towards estuary English but as Armenia is several thousand miles away from Kent, Essex, OR London one can only assume he’s trying to emulate the vocal stylings of  Dennis Waterman from Minder, a show that has clearly been re-run to death on Armenia1.

Getting past that, the song itself is a stomper with a driving beat to it and PARG doing a lot of pouting around the stage in the preview video.  I also know why the middle eight is there in the song, in order to provide contrast, that’s right, but it just seems to break up the nature of the song for me and doesn’t add to anything, it just takes away from it – It’s almost like someone thought “Shit, we’d better put some authentic Armenian instruments in the song cos that’s what people expect”.

PARG’s voice also seems to be on a knife edge as well. It could just take one mistimed or mis-pitched note to completely ruin the song and I don’t think he’d have the talent or musical know how to get it back on track. It’ll be over produced on stage, of course, but despite all of these flaws, it has a certain something that should get it through to the final, I reckon. I don’t think it would do much in a jury/televote final, however, but getting there should be the prize.

Phil’s Score – 6 Points