Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) – Israel 🇮🇱

Michael Ben David – I.M

Vocal:

I don’t know. It’s probably me, but he sounds pretty pitchy and strained in certain parts of the song. I think the strained BAAAAAAABYYYYY within the first moments of the song kind of made me lose interest. Since this happened right at the beginning of the song, perhaps he was experiencing some nerves. Then again, I am a fan of building up the vocal as the song progresses – don’t be starting off the song screaming.

Musical Arrangement:

While I like the overall message and composition of the song, it sounded pretty general. You know, like something that would be performed at an LGBT bar or drag queen brunch. Case in point, Michael’s song sounds a lot like Bilal Hassani’s (ESC 2019, France) song, Basic – https://youtu.be/dODJK9SNbMs.

Staging:

In terms of the lighting, pyro, and dancing/choreo, I think the song is pretty much Eurovision-ready. Also, being on a bigger stage in Turnin more than likely will enhance all of the fun and cool staging effects. BTW, I love the little dance break around 1:53. I really enjoy that many of the Israeli artists incorporate some middle eastern sounds into their performances for Eurovision. Even though most performers do not sing in one of their countries’ national languages, I appreciate it when they incorporate some themes from their regions of the world.

Final Thoughts:

While I’m not a huge fan of the singer’s voice, the singer has a great stage presence and the song oozes a great deal of confidence (which can be a good or bad thing). I feel that the performance with the dancers and lighting effects saves the overall vocal. I think that the public vote will bring it to the final, but the national juries may not give it high marks, which might hurt it in the final.

Israel in last year’s Eurovision:

Eden Alene – Set Me Free

• Semi-final results: 5th place out of 16 performances (192 total points – 99 national juries and 93 public votes)

• Final results: 17th place out of 26 performances (93 total points – 73 national juries and 20 public votes)

I gotta say that I was a bit shocked with Eden’s placement in the finals because I was sure that she was going to be in the top ten. I mean, the performance had it all – a strong vocal, decent dancing, nice staging, a fabulous hairstyle. Random trivia: Eden hit the highest note in the history of Eurovision. Honestly, I thought her performance was a lot better than some of the other acts that placed higher. I think her placement was affected by a couple of factors that were out of her control.

• The running order: I believe Eden was 3rd in the running order, which meant that she performed in the first half of the contest. I think this order might have hurt her with the public vote especially in the mix of so many pop songs by other Eurodivas.

• Political voting: During Eurovision (May 21), Israel was involved in a military back and forth with Palestine, which may have soured the public toward Israel, not Eden. It probably did not help to have a song called Set Me Free while engaged in such a military back forth. In Israel’s defense, the song was submitted in March before the Israeli-Palestine tensions. Had Eden completed for another country, I think that she would have placed higher in this ESC2021. In fact, for Eurovision 2019 (see below), several acts expressed their concerns over the contest being held in Tel Aviv.

Image courtesy of The Times of Israel

I thought it was a bit disgusting that the Iceland performers held up a Free Palestine message during the voting segment of the contest. It’s fine to have your opinion, but these types of political messages should stay out of competitions like this.

Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) – Spain 🇪🇸

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.

Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) – Moldova 🇲🇩

Zdob Si Zdub & Fratii Advahov - Trenuletul

Vocal:

Fratti’s voice is pretty average with nothing really to write home (or to Europe) about. If he sang a bit faster, he would sound like an auctioneer – “12 points from Moldova, going once, going twice, sold to the lady in the red hat with flowers”. Also, I’m not sure why he is wearing sunglasses for their entire performance. Maybe he had something going on with his eyes. Just as an FYI: one of my pet peeves is people wearing sunglasses inside for no apparent reason. I mean, are you too cool for the room?

Musical Arrangement:

I kinda like the “Hey Ho! Let’s go folklore and rock n roll”, and not because it is the only part in English ;). I will say that I love the polka-esque vibe of the song. While I am a fan of ballads and dance tracks for these sorts of competitions, I really appreciate when artists incorporate components of their culture into the song (outside of just singing the song in their native/national language). Also, I think the band is a bit stronger than the lead singer.

Staging:

While they look like they are having fun (especially the guitarist on the far left), I found the staging to be very dry. It kind of looks like a performance from Eurovision contests back in the 80s. Maybe the group is trying to relive older Eurovisions where you just had performers sing and dance without all of the fancy lighting and staging. This is not a bad thing, but in recent Eurovisions, those performers typically do not do well. Based on the performance itself, I have NO idea what the song is about. However, I did view the music video and thought it was very fun and cheeky. Pretty much, the lead singer and the band get into some crazy antics while aboard a train traveling from Chisinau, Moldova to Bucharest, Romania (the capital cities of the two countries). Going forward, they will have to add some things to enhance the staging. I’m not sure if they can add more people, because I think ESC entrants can have about six folks on stage. Who knows, maybe they’ll have a big ass train on the stage since the title, Trenuletul, is Romanian for train. Kind of like how the performers from Turkey used their costumes to convert themselves into a boat. ;)

Image courtesy of NeoGAF

Final Thoughts:

I think this should be more of a 2.5-star rating because I personally kind of like it. Even as I type this, I am bopping my head. As of right now, I do not see the song advancing to the final round, but with some modifications in the staging, it might have a shot. However, Moldova and its crazy cast of characters seem to be wild cards in Eurovision. When you count the country out, it ends up doing well.

Moldova in last year’s Eurovision:

Natalia Gordienko – Sugar

The hubby told me that we are supposed to use “Eurodivas” for performers like Natalia.

Semi-final results: 7th place out of 17 performances (179 total points – 56 jury and 123 public votes)

Final Results: 13th place out of 26 performances (115 total points – 53 jury and 62 public votes)

I will say that I was a bit surprised that she performed so well in the final. For instance, the performance received a maximum of 12 points from Bulgaria and Russia in the final. Well, the twelve points from Russia make sense because of her Russian connections. Her artistic director has been known to purchase votes from former Soviet countries for his artists. If you saw Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga movie, the Russian group’s leader singer is based on this artistic director. I’m not saying his name because I do not need that kind of heat.  Although I was surprised that it did so well in the competition, I did like the performance (especially the funny/funky dance before the chorus) and portions of the performance have become memes in the Eurovision world.

Whatever folks may think about her ESC2021 performance, it’s sure is a lot better than her ESC2006 contribution. Also, she definitely managed to keep her body right and tight for over 15 years.