Eliot continues an almost annual run of Belgian competitors drawn from one or other of the local ‘Voice Of’ shows, the fifth of the previous seven Belgian competitors to come from the franchise. With a 12th 10th and two 4th place finishes, it seems to be a successful strategy. It feels like there’s been a deliberate ramping-up of efforts from the nation who struggled for most of the 2000s to find their direction.
Eliot continues too the trend for Belgium to send a cool, contemporary pop song to Eurovision, contributing plenty to the changing image of the whole show. One of the writers behind one of those impressive 4th places, Pierre Dumoulin, who penned Blanche’s ‘City Lights’, is drafted back for this, co-written with Eliot himself. It gives it an almost familiar sound, and is a rallying cry for the young to step up and campaign for a more tolerant world, its title ‘Wake Up’ somehow managing to stay just on the right side of what could have been cloyingly ‘woke’.
I like this, and many others do too, but it doesn’t have the magic of ‘City Lights’ or ‘Rhythm Inside’.
In a very open semi-final, I give this a chance, but I can’t squeeze it in among my certain qualifiers. It feels like it’s fallen back in the rankings as more songs were chosen after it.
I feel a lot may depend on how they stage it, and you only have to cast your mind back one year to Sennek to see how easily they can balls that up, even with a promising song.
Monty’s score: 8 points