“What do you see? You people gazing at me?” – I always said this song had a bit of a music box feel to it and indeed Katarina is doing her finest Sally Anne Howes impression, minus the dirndl. I’ll have to take Mr Phil’s word for it when he says it looks like she’s standing inside The Rat from Joe90… back to the staging, there are lots of very nice elements to this. The music is gentle and pretty, Katarina sings well, the simple addition of a dancer, the trombone solo… and of course, a costume change is always a memorable touch. There’s the crescendo at the end too, waltzing around to the colours of the Serbian national flag adds to the whole fairy-tale feeling it looks like they want to go for.
As an idea, it’s all quite lovely. It suits the feel of the song and there’s a clear narrative. Brilliant. So why does it feel like all these good ideas are not adding up well? Some of the changes (costume, handing over the trombone) look a little ill-thought-out and I feel like Katarina is avoiding looking into the camera for much of the song. This may be a dramatic device as she’s pretending to be a music box doll, but in a competition where you votes will partly come from people who are looking through the camera, that might be worth rethinking that detail. The parts are all there. With some tweaking, this will be a memorable addition to the 2022 line up and should see Serbia leave Yerevan with a fair number of points.