Belgium, oh Belgium, you've done it again haven't you. You've not had such a rich vein of goodness since the dawn of the eighties, and now you've gone and quite unexpectedly delivered us with another bona fide gem of a song that just cheered up a long walk home in the rain by quite some measure.
This doesn't sound like a song written for Eurovision. This sounds like the song that Mercury nominated band that you haven't got around to hearing yet plays on the awards show. This is the song that appears third on Jools Holland, the song you'd Shazam if you heard it in a bar. It's familiar, yet quite fresh and understated, and sticks in the memory for some time upon a single hearing.
But having said all that, these things don't necessarily count for much in this funny old song contest. It could very easily be jury bait, but it'll all be down to the staging. Keep it too subtle and it could get smothered by the pack when it comes to televoting time. But give it too many on stage MacGuffins and you could kill it stone dead. Vast swathes of people just aren't going to get it, but for me it's one of the coolest and classiest songs we've seen in a long old while.
But I seriously can't call how it's going to do. This is going to be the interesting one to watch.
This has gone straight into my top five - she has a really distinctive vocal style and that will probably make this a Marmite song. Good in a way in that people will want to vote for it - I described this on FB as:
ReplyDelete"In a sea of Kyiv ballads, this is a stunning island of subtle pop!"