Monty’s Eurovision Countdown 2023 Part 28 – Portugal

Ai Coração by Mimicat.

If you don’t have anything good to say don’t say anything at all, advised every parent, ever. It’s a strategy I feel I might be better sticking to and just leaving this review blank. No disrespect to Mimicat, who I hope has the time of her life at Eurovision; but I just can’t bear her song.

I’m not even sure why I dislike it, but dislike it I do. With every cell of my being. It’s not that I think Mimicat is not being sincere in deploying cabaret flourishes and long-established theatricality, but I sense a kind of artifice in its cutesy ditziness: ditz for ditz’s sake if you will, and this has me tuning out.

If I can salvage one redeeming feature, it’s that the song’s inclusion in the Festival da Canção is a mark of its diversity: it’s grown into one of the most consistently entertaining national selections. The flip side of diversity is that you can’t love everything, and that is precisely where I am with this song.

My marks: nul points