Romania – Roxen is going to have to perform major surgery here.

Those of you that have read this blog often enough over the years know that I rarely hold back on what I think and, if you are of a Romanian disposition, I’d look away now.

There is so so so much wrong with this song. Let’s start with the staging. My first thought was: “what even is this?” (and I said as much out loud here at the OnEurope temp press centre). I saw a performer walking through five dancers, being spun round, having them claw at her and do all sorts of other things that it looks like it’s a three minute interpretive dance routine of what my head looks like in a morning.

Then I listen to the words of the song… Well, I would if I can make them out. Roxen’s articulation needs work – quickly. If you are going to sing in English, make sure you can actually enunciate the words … and, yes, Loreen mumbled her way to Eurovision immortality… this ain’t no Euphoria and Roxen ain’t no Loreen.

The main take away from this song is that Roxen keeps singing about “Self-Love”, over and over and over again like a stick beating the casual listener into submission, which could be right *or* wrong depending on the context that the listener places onto what they see a week on Tuesday. The vocal itself is breathless and weak and, in parts, messy, it just doesn’t look anything near a confident performance that the other 4-5-6 before it will have. It just seems thrown together. This may be a classic case of all concept and forgetting about the actual song which is a cardinal mistake in a song contest.