Last of the Belarussian non-qualifiers for a bit - although I'm quite sure I'll be revisiting them in the quiet weeks. And it's a cutie. Witness here the very definition of an awkward performance. The lass herself is done up a treat, and her little clumpy twirl just before suggests that we're about to be dealt a lovely slab of attitude and spark. But when she anxiously counts herself in before her vocal starts then looks around to check that the dancers are in place, you fear the worst.
And that's pretty much what you get, sadly. We can put her strangled singing voice down to inexperience - to sing for the TV executives on such a big stage for the first time must be frankly terrifying. But she throttles those syllables like she's never spoken English before, let along sung in it. Add to this the two dancers, who seem to be doing their own thing, like the warm up for a school play - and that quickly off-camera bit of guitar miming is just excruciating. We can thank the lecherous Belarussian cameraman for saving us for once.
But having said all that, I think it's a real shame how it all turned out. The song itself isn't actually half bad, and Nika looks like she's got a pop star hiding somewhere in her bones, if only she could wrestle it out. And she even had half a good idea with the two dancers. If she did all of this off her own back, I suspect she's got the moxy to try again next year - and we can only look forward to that!
A textbook fixer-upper. With some voice coaching and a couple of drinks, she could definitely have pulled this off.
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