Portugal – It’s a Bond film short of perfection

The Black Mamba, Portugal, First Rehearsal, Rotterdam Ahoy, 11 May 2021 — EBU / Thomas Hanses
The Black Mamba, Portugal, First Rehearsal, Rotterdam Ahoy, 11 May 2021

I was predisposed to loving this song from the moment I heard it in the FdC but now its on stage it’s even better than I thought.

Black Mamba have taken a song which doesn’t have much going for it in a competitive setting, and performed it to within an inch of its life, and not with overblown guff because it isn’t that type of song. Pedro, the lead vocalist, doesn’t miss a note and has an easy lounge singer style that I really like.

They have used the background to reveal an orchestra, well a string section, complete with conductor waving the baton in time with the music , the side wall graphics are just someone walking down the street and by the time Pedro gets to the satellite stage and approximates with his guitar, I’m already invested so much in the song that it makes me get goosebumps and few songs have done that for me this year.

The Black and White camera effect at the start of the song is a contrast but I’m left asking myself if its really needed now because the rest of the performance is so powerful… and Pedro’s panama hat annoys me for no reason but I digress.

Simple staging concepts in this Contest are, when paired with a good song, usually a winning combination. This is far from winning, because there are better songs, but this is going to do a damn sight better than fan media are predicting – principally because we know nothing.

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