Switzerland – He’s on the road… the road to Hull?!

I know what this is supposed to be: the angsty boy-type ripping his heart out and telling you that he is vulnerable and all that. I get the feeling that the audience has just seen Monika being all “Cabaret” at them for the last three minutes, and are on a downward spiral … and, based on the first run through, Marius is going to drive the audience to drink…. or slit their wrists.

It is a very, very long three minutes compared to, say, Latvia or Albania, and that is not to say that it’s a bad song. That first run through, though, left me cold mainly because of the mismatch between how Marius looks and the voice make you think “Surely those two don’t go together”.  It’s all shot in the dark, again, so the broken kinetic sun may not have had that much of an effect, and the broken heart motif on the floor and projected onto his face to make him look like he is crying is all a bit unnecessary for me. Just leaving it on the floor LEDs would be better.

He says he needs a bit more compression on the voice, so he knows how he wants this to sound – which is always the sign of a good performer – so let’s hope that vocal (which did seem a little strained) sounds better the next time through.

And it does – he seems to be a little more expressive with his hands this time, which is good – but again there is a metric fuckton of wide shots, which surely is something this song doesn’t need.

It just needs one camera focussed on Marius singing his heart out, but we don’t get that – we get the whole arty vibe. My dad comes into the room where I am whilst they are going through the cue pilot footage  – I remark that Marius’s voice sounds like Chris Rea (On the road to hell, specifically) to which he replies “More like diarrhoea” which has actually floored me!

By the time I regather my composure, the third run-through has all but finished and, sadly, even through this is very emotive, there is too much wrong with it, I think, to trouble the scorers that much.

🇨🇭 Okay, this does have potential. It’s got cool staging with projections and nice lightning. But, Marius needs to control his movements. For such gentle song, he’s very chaotic in his movements. Getting 2am drunk karaoke vibes from them. It does have potential! #Eurovision

— ESC Conor 🇮🇪 (@ESCConor) May 4, 2022

I must confess, I’m one of the few people who enjoy the sweet sentimentality of the #Swiss song, but this ain’t working. Bloke in dark clothes on a dark background nervously waving his arms about. Hmm. It’s as if you’d ordered George Ezra on Wish and this turned up. #Eurovision

— EurovisionApocalypse (@ESCApocalypse) May 4, 2022