The Annual Amsterdam Review

From Riga the Eurovision circus moves across to Amsterdam with more than half of this year’s entrants performing at the Eurovision in Concert show, which is now a traditional part of the warm up to May. Reviewing the actual performances is something we’ll do later (although a 24-song recap is available on this link), but here are my top 3 off-stage moments emerging from Amsterdam’s bubble.

3: Slovenia’s insistence to keep their headphones around their necks constantly. One has the worrying feeling this is going to feel very stale after two weeks in the Press Centre.

2: Måns meeting Will from Wiwibloggs once more was a great interview. Got some good insights about his career and his fitness regime which really show the full game mode you have to be in when in the Swedish competition. Måns is saying exactly the correct things and is being a PR gentleman, and the smile when he realises how much the crowd is cheering along suggests he’s still top.

1: Electro Velvet have been elusive about singing their songs when journalists ask them awkwardly to sing a bit of their song. That’s a pet hate of mine anyway so yay on them for resisting. The acoustic version of ‘Still In Love With You’ is nicely in a different style but when Alex messes up the guitar part it is still comical.

And On With The Insights

This week we’ve given betting analysis to this year’s Song Contest written by John Lucas (I think after my Melodifestivalen failure this time around I’m no longer trusted on such matters) and Ewan’s second video essay looks at the technical details in framing good duets. Juke Box Jury seems to have divided opinion this week as Norway and Albania were hot topics and I’m looking forward to airing my own views on them later. For now though I’ve published the first article from my time in Riga about the busy lifestyle of a Eurovision act in April.

The weekly edition of Wren’s Wien going through the nightlife options in Vienna is now up on the website too as we are close to approaching ground zero.

The Matters at OGAE

The biggest fan club organising is holding fire on releasing the fan club results until May this year, but cheeky snippets of information coming out from fan meetings in Malmö and Tallinn have seen mutally runaway victories for Estonia and Sweden respectfully.

In other news this year is an election year for OGAE’s International Board. Coverage to promote the elections hasn’t been stellar, but nominations close on 20th April at midnight if you fancy a last-minute slot on being the next President.

Snippets From Across The Web

The Eurovision Conference taking place in London is this Friday, and it seems the EBU are in need of more people to go along for the day. I’m quite jealous of anybody who can make it, but they have confirmed a livestream on eurovision.tv for those like me who can’t.

Lithuania’s got a new video out featuring the slightly sped-up-we’re-opening-the-show-so-we-need-to-be-uptempo version of the song which is causing a little flutter for its gay kiss moment which is so 2013. ESCBubble also have Eurovision stars giving reviews of the songs including Eldar Gasimov, Azerbaijan’s male singer in ‘Running Scared’, saying that Iceland should be top three in Vienna.

Conchita has been writing an autobiography (already?) and Vlad our Junior Eurovision organiser wants more of your questions. I want to know which country lost to Bulgaria in the bidding for JESC 2015 if someone can pass that on.

Robertson's Reflection

As traditional here comes my countdown of the artists who made the best opportunity of their three minutes on the Amsterdam stage in front a 1,500 Eurovision fans to impress them, and who really did not deliver any magic to help their cause before Austria next month.

Winners:

Germany - Ann Sophie with ‘Black Smoke’

Ann Sophie’s qualification route from amateur wildcard to being handed victory by default has already made her association with Eurovision a little bit fraught. Adding to that has been the issue that this was her ‘second’ song in the Contest and not the one she originally was competing with (that was ‘Jump The Gun’). Her Club Concert performance was very confident and in comparison the performance of ‘Black Smoke’ felt karaoke in the German National Final.

Now though she owns the song and it feels connected to her artistry. For me Ann Sophie now has made this her own the performance had a sense of self-security about it now that I worried would be lost after the debacle in Hannover.

Serbia - Bojana Stamenov with ‘Beauty Never Lies’

People comparing this to ‘Crisalide’ from San Marino for it’s two part structure as a negative need to step back a little. Points wise that’s still San Marino’s best ever Semi Final result and that’s without some suspect jury favoritism towards the microstate and the curse of being drawn second.

Here the mood, style and message are much more in your face on the transition than San Marino offered and it’s vital if you are doing that the crowd carry that emotion through with you. They do so by the bucketload; Eurovision fans get this and will cheer it on. This would be a good song to end the Grand Final with if that opportunity arises.

Losers:

Moldova - Eduard Romanyuta with ‘I Want Your Love’

I don’t understand this. With the dancers back Eduard looks like the sleazy pop star nobody is going to like and cast a vote for. He is good at charming an audience on stage when let loose, but to bring in the people from his National Final performance without an difference or gimmick seems a mistake to gain some positive news at the biggest preview event.

More than anybody this would have been the perfect event for Eduard to have created a little bubble of excitement by trying something new. He hasn’t done that with this performance which makes him less involved with the public than what I saw in Riga.

Poland - Monika Kuszynska with ‘In The Name Of Love’

This was drawn after Azerbaijan in Riga last week and I thought it lacked power there, but I attributed that to a great vocal from the Voice of Turkey winner. Actually Monika here lacks anything at all. There is little dynamic movement in the entire three minutes from her vocal and live this doesn’t connect deep enough to get any success. I can’t see people grabbing this story as the one tearing their hearts after coming through Azerbaijan and Cyprus and even dare I say Switzerland in that half of the draw alone.

In press interviews Monika is finding almost any opportunity to bring in her disability and, without trying to be critical of her obvious hardship, it seems very desperate. I can imagine the usually active Polish televote giving this a miss and Lithuania’s diaspora picking up 12’s instead of 10’s. Poland is now on the back foot in the pre-Contest build up.