If you are talking generic and if you are talking about songs that clearly know their audience, then Serbia should be right at the top of your list.
It’s got all the courses from the set menu:
- The ethnic instruments both in the backing track and on stage
- A generic Balkan old man playing his equivalent of a penny whistle while looking very scary indeed
- A generic singing women making the same old Balkan noises that every song of this ilk has made for a gazilliion years
- A hairy man singing the actual meat of the tune at you
The staging to me is also very “macho” with the females seeming to fawn at the alpha male backing singer, and then after about 90 seconds in, it reminds me very strongly of the Bulgarian track “Voda” with the wailing and the drumming.
And yet, it knows who is going to vote for this. It’s going for Eastern Europe, it’s going for people who like ethnic songs … and it’s not pretending to be anything that it isn’t – and that’s what the contest is all about, to be honest.
I think, though, it’s not qualifying.