Eurovision 2012 Entrants: Azerbaijan

As you know, since you're reading my blog, Azerbaijan won last year's contest and they have the hard task of following up their winning song.

In recent years, countries have had a hard time repeating the success of their previous year's winner.  A good case in point is Norway in 2010.

Oslo had the honor of hosting the contest after winning the previous year with this song:

 Alexander Rybak  "Fairytale"  Norway  2009

"Fairytale" was the runaway winner of that year's contest, getting 169 more points that the second place finisher. 

The next year, they sent this song:

Didrik Solli-Tangen  "My Heart Is Yours"  Norway  2010

It's a completely different song, and it came in twentieth in the final that year.

With that in mind, take a listen to this year's Azerbaijani entry:

Sabina Babayeva  "When The Music Dies"

I have a suspicion that his is going to fall to the same fate that Solli-Tangen did a few years ago, and get nowhere near the top ohalf of the board at the end of the contest.

But unlike Solli-Tangen, whose issues was really a voice that was burned out, Ms. Babayeva has an even bigger issue--an inability to actually interpret the song.

"When the Music Dies" is a ballad, and you must be able to not only sing the song tunefully, but be able to interpret them in a way that shows you understand the feeling behind the song, and Ms. Babayeva can only do the first.  Since English isn't her first language, Ms. Babayeva comes off sounding like an automaton, not a real live human being.   

It's very difficult to be able to find the emotion when singing in another language--I would have the same difficulty singing in German--a language I have a tenuous grasp on.  Unfortunately, she's trying to appeal to a pan-European audience and I don't think this was the song for her to do that.