Monty’s Eurovision Countdown 2024 Part 16 – Greece

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Well, this is refreshingly different. Marina Satti gives us one of the most contemporary songs of Eurovision 2024.

From the opening of the music video, it’s clear Marina wants to offer something different, something that challenges our expectations. She’s collecting newly arrived tourists at the airport for her Eurovision tour. The clip, shot to look like an amateur travel video, follows a parallel journey of a tourist around some of Greece’s best-known tourist sites, including the Acropolis in Athens. Marina baits him into the taxi she’s somehow ended up driving and here seems to take him captive, spinning the car as he sits terrified in the back seat.

Along the way she sends up some of the stereotypes of Greek culture: gyros, Greek dancing, and ancient tourist traps. She’s described her aim as wanting to shake up what people think about Greece and present something more of the modern and urban culture. She certainly does this sonically, with music that blends Greek sounds with reggaeton and other styles of the eastern Mediterranean. Lyrically it feels to break less new ground.

10 pointsI’m so intrigued to see how she presents this on stage. It would be challenging to carry through the motifs of the video, but it’s a song that feels it needs something thematic, and more than just formation choreography.  I’m also intrigued to see how it goes down with the viewers and the juries. It’s already a massive number one hit in Greece where it’s been certified gold. It won’t be everybody’s glass of ouzo but I’m so here for this kind of sound in the Contest.

 

Photo: Peggy Theodorogianni/EBU