Preface:
I had not planned on watching any of the individual countries’ national selections. Since the hubby is from Spain (sorry, I mean España), I had the privilege of watching Benidorm Fest, which is Spain’s national selection for Eurovision. Boy was there some drama. I learned the term is actually “Eurodrama”. The issue was pretty much between three entries – Chanel’s SloMo (the winner), Tanxugueiras’ Terra, and Rigoberta Bandini’s Ay Mamá.
Chanel – SloMo
Vocal:
While I really like the song, it is quite clear that Chanel is more of a dancer than a singer, which is fine. I do not think she’s a bad singer, but there were other stronger vocalists in the national selection. There definitely is time for Chanel to improve her vocal range before May.
Musical Arrangement:
To be perfectly honest, I was not a huge fan of the song before watching the national selection. A few days prior to Benidorm Fest, the hubby played the Spotify playlist with the 16 candidates, and I found SloMo to be annoyingly repetitive and weak (relative to the other songs). Of course, that all changed when I saw her semifinal performance. I was pretty much like this song and performance is Eurovision-ready. Because of the live performance, I’m still repeating the chorus: “Check the video and watch in Slomo mo mo mo. Booty hypnotic, make you want more, mo mo mo. Voy a bajarlo hasta el suelo lo lo lo” Hey, I did not say the lyrics had significant meaning, but they are pretty catchy.
Staging:
Constant movement is one thing that I really love with pop performances (especially when there is not a strong vocal), and Chanel did not fail in that aspect. Also, the lighting effects were pretty nice especially at 1:50 when the lighting gave a slow-motion effect. Of course, the dance breakdown at 2:09 was on point. I think the dance breakdown saved the performance. In the studio version, from 2:09 to 3:15 she basically repeated the chorus 80 million times, so the dance break added a bit more substance to the song.
Final Thoughts:
I’ll give this bad boy (errrr girl) 5 stars, but I do hope that she works on the vocals over the next few months. I would not mind hearing a strong, sustained note during a portion of the song because I feel like she relies on too much backing vocal. Then again, maybe that’s impossible because she does dance pretty much throughout the entire song.
The drama . . . I mean The Eurodrama:
Over the past few years, Spain has had some difficulties in Eurovision by typically landing in the bottom five. It’s somewhat embarrassing because Spain is one of the Big Five of Eurovision meaning that it contributes a large financial chunk for the song contest. Just for reference, the other Big Five countries include the UK, France, Italy, and Germany. This year, I think one of the issues for Spain is having a song/performance that will keep it out of the bottom five while “fully” representing the country.
For Spain’s national selection the winning scores were broken down like this: 50% national jury, 25 public vote, and 25% demographic vote. Chanel won the national jury vote, but did not win the public and demographic votes, so many folks in Spain are very disappointed. The hubby was a bit disappointed, but he’s fine with the selection. However, many folks have expressed their disappointment by going on social media and attacking Chanel to the point where she deactivated her Twitter account. This is annoying because she did not do anything but perform her song. I mean go off on the selection process and RTVE, the organization that selects Spain’s Eurovision candidates. While I thought the other two songs were more representative of Spain, I do not think that they would have kept Spain out of the bottom five. One song was very folkloric and performed in Galician (a Spanish dialect) and the other one, which was an anti-sexism anthem, was very hard to interpret from the performance (see image below).
Really, a boob as a globe?
One more thing because this is kind of long. This fake wokeness is getting on my nerves. It’s funny how the folks who wanted Rigaberta (the performer with the “boob globe”) to win with her anthem of female empowerment are some of the same people taking to social media to bully another woman. So it’s ok for a woman to grab and rub her breasts on stage (Rigaberta), but it’s bad for another to shake her “booty hypnotic” (Chanel)? I don’t have a problem with either, but could someone make it make sense? Why is it good for one, but not the other if that’s how both women want to express themselves? Perhaps, I’m missing something.
Speaking of the bottom five – España in last year’s Eurovision:
Blas Canto – Voy a Quedarme
Semi-final results: Since Spain is one of the Big Five, it goes straight to the finals and does not have to compete in the semifinal
Final results: 24th place out of 26 performances (6 total points – 6 jury and 0 public votes).
I was a bit surprised that he ended up in 24th place because the song was not THAT bad and he is a decent singer. To be honest, I thought that it was going to end up anywhere in the high teens (~15th – 18th place). For ESC21, many of the male ballad singers did not do very well, with the exception of Switzerland (he ended up in 3rd place). The other male ballad singers from Austria, Estonia, and North Macedonia (he was really off-key though, but I love the studio version) did not qualify.
What’s even more surprising is that Spain did not receive any national jury votes from its friends/neighboring countries. They received four points from Romania and two points from the UK. I was kind of shocked they did not receive any points from Portugal or France. In many cases, neighboring countries tend to give each other points. I mean Spain gave Portugal six points (5 national jury and 1 public votes) and France the maximum of 24 points (12 national jury and 12 public votes). To be fair, France had an amazing performance last year.
The hubby did mention that Blas sometimes comes off a bit fake – crying on cue and saying that he wrote this song for his grandmother who died from COVID, which does make sense because
It’s a romantic song. “Voy a quedarme y prometo quererte más que ayer. Voy a besarte muy lento como la primera vez.” which translates into “I’m going to stay and promise to love you more than yesterday. I’m going to kiss you very slowly like the first time.” To me, this seems more like a song for a lost lover, NOT your grandmother.
He wrote the song BEFORE his grandmother died. Maybe she was sick while he was writing it.