Albania seems to be in a rut. For the past four years, they have sent a woman with a huge voice singing a string heavy power ballad.
Albania has not had a good track record qualifying in recent years with women with huge voices singing power ballads and in a year where there are a lot of women with huge voices singing power ballads, this year's Albanian entrant has to find something to make herself memorable.
Lindita "Bote"
Lindita "World"
As you can see in both the original Albanian entry and the English revamp, Lindita has chosen to feature her ass.
Her ass is lovely, but when I'm more interested in her ass than her song, there's a problem.
He sex appeal is the way she'll make it into the Eurovision final, but I want Albania to stop sending this type of song to Eurovision. Send another ethnic-influenced hair band! Send a disco diva! Stop the melodramatic ballads!
Although Eurovision has been over for a couple of weeks, I'm typing about it now because I've finally had my yearly Eurovision party.
Congrats to Sweden. We ranked your fourth.
Usually I have it a little while after the live broadcast, it's an excuse to have people over, make some interesting food, and have a little bit of fun by ranking the songs.
It's always very interesting on where we agree and disagree with the voters from Europe.
Our Favorite:
Aminata "Love Injected" Latvia
Latvia's first final qualifier in eight years won us over with the exceptional vocals from Aminata and the extremely modern, almost avant garde, staging.
It was ranked in the top five of everybody at the party and would recieve our "douze points".
Other Winners:
Lisa Angell "N'oubliez pas" France
Even though Angell was placed in the "slot of death", performing second on the night of the final, Angell's passionate hit us in the sweet spot, coming in second our voting and would have received ten pomts from us. Angell receiving only four points was one of the biggest shocks of this year's voting.
Ann Sophie "Black Smoke" Germany
Ann Sophie wouldn't have gone away with "nul points" if our little group of voters were considered. "Black Smoke" came in sixth in our voting and picked up five points from us. The sexy staging and the powerhouse vocals worked for this little group of Americans.
The Biggest Loser:
Elhaida Dani "I'm Alive" Albania
I'm always happy when Albania makes it to the finals, but I have to agree with almost everybody else at our party and put Dani dead last. There's no hiding off key, screechy vocals.
Other Losers:
Polina Gagarina "A Million Voices" Russia
Although Russia came in seventh in our voting, the little group I had over was made up of members of the LBGT community and their allies. Politics caused us to vote the song down our list, even though we all admitted she hit this song out of the park.
However, the booking of Gagarina by the crowd was extremely tasteless. She's just a singer, not a politician.
Nadav Gued "Golden Boy" Israel
Israel may have hit the top ten in European voting, but the ethnopop from a guy attempting to be Justin Timberlake attempting to be Michael Jackson got more jeers than kudos.
The fake selfie at the end of the song was a particular groan worthy moment...
And that's Eurovision 2015. Now it's time to focus on a move and look forward to 2016 and the contest in Sweden.
Well, I just shocked myself. I took a look at the list of songs I selected to make it through to the final, and I got nine out of ten correct.
Here are the ten finalists:
Armenia
Belgium
Greece
Estonia
Serbia
Hungary
Russia
Albania
Romania
Georgia
The only one I missed was Albania. I had the Netherlands in instead.
But for those of you who aren't interested in watching the whole thing, here's some of the highlights of the contest.
The Biggest Surprise:
Elhaida Dani "I'm Alive" Albania
I'm happy that Albania has made it into the final. But Dani got really lucky because her final performance was off key and rather stilted.
My guess is that she had a superb performance last night and she scored well with the juries. It's the only explanation for the qualification.
The Biggest Disappointment:
Trijntje Oosterhuis "Walk Along" the Netherlands
I'm certain that Oosterhuis and the Dutch team wanted to make the final, and the vocals were superb. But everything else chosen was chosen to make people not vote for it. The clothes, the camera shots, and the lighting all were weird for no good reason.
Had she performed the song as she had on The Voice Holland this would have been in the final.
The Song I Would Have Voted For:
Boggie "Wars For Nothing" Hungary
I enjoy watching the semifinals without knowing much about the final performances. That means a song that I didn't necessarily rate will get my vote. Like last year's San Marinese entry, I didn't rate Hungary's song highly. But when seeing this live, this was the song I would have voted for. A simple song performed perfectly will get my vote.
The Can't-Miss Song
Eduard Romanyuta "I Want Your Love" Moldova
It's a rare song that makes you feel like you could get a STD by watching it. Good job Mr. Romanyuta. You made me feel like taking a course of antibiotics. And now you need to watch it too.
The first semi-final of the Eurovision Song Contest starts in less than a week, so it's time to finish taking a look at the last songs in the contest.
Albania chose their winner through Festivali i Këngës, an Albanian broadcast that is now in its fifty-third year. This contest takes place over a three day period on Christmas weekend. The winning artist and song are sent to represent Albania at Eurovision and this year, Albania selected this song.
Elhaida Dani "Diell"
The winning song is a power ballad that features Dani's vocal prowess and utilizes the live orchestra that is a fixture of Festivali i Këngës. Dani gives a performance that is worthy of going to Vienna.
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However, "Diell" isn't the song that Dani will be singing on stage in Vienna.
Festivali i Këngës doesn't have many of the restrictions that Eurovision has, so songs are typically shortened and rearranged before they take the stage, and this year due to an "unchangable personal reason" the author of "Diell" decided to withdraw his song after FiK. This means a new song was chosen internally for Dani to perform.
Elhaida Dani "I'm Alive"
It's really a smart move. Instead of cutting down the original song, which is more than a minute too long, this new song is withing the time limit. It's also in English and structured to highlight Dani's singing range.
For the first time in years, Albania is going to make the finals!
Slowly but surely I'm making my way through the national finals, and finally I'm getting to the results from Albania, who chose their winner back in December.
The Albanian representative was chosen through Festivali i Këngës, the Albanian show has chosen Albania's Eurovision representative since they first entered the contest in 2004.
I'm personally partial to the format of Festivali i Këngës, where the contest is much more of a concert instead of a stadium show. The format puts the songs and the artists front and center, not the lights, dancers, or distracting video displays...like Eurovision seems to have become in the past few years.
It makes me wonder what the Albanians would come up with if they staged the contest:
The Winner
Adrian Lulgjuraj & Bledar Sejko "Identitet"
I get why the song won the contest. Bledar Sejko's guitar work is extremely impressive, and the mix of the guitar work contrasted with the string and tympani arrangement is striking. The music, combined with Adrian Lulgjuraj strong vocals, made it an understandable winner, even if it left me a bit cold.
I must confess that I am a bit distracted by Bledar Sejko. He looks like an ex-boyfreind of mine, and when I showed a picture of the performers to my friend Janet S., her response was "Albania is pandering to you this year, aren't they?"
Perhaps they are, but sadly, unless I decided to go on a spur of the moment European vacation, I'm not going to be able to vote in the contest.
I just hope that Albania doesn't prerecord the track. The pull of the song is Sejko's guitar work, and if Sejko can perform as well as he did in this clip, I can see the song making the final easily by getting support from the national juries.
Should Have Won
Anjeza Shahini "Love"
Shahini was Albania's first representative in the Eurovision Song Contest, and she did quite well, coming in seventh in 2004. She's also the performer of my favorite Albanian Eurovision entrant. And I think that that filters over to my preference this entry, even though the song is admittedly weaker than "Identitet".
I'll admit that after listening to the song a few more times,"Love" would have needed a lot of work before going to Sweden and for that reason I can understand why Anjeza didn't win the contest. You can have a fantastic singer, but if the song is weak it's not likely to win.
"Identitet" didn't hook me, but I have to say the Albanians picked a stronger song with a strong performance, and I totally respect that.
My Favorite
Besides the two mentioned above, two other artists caught my attention during the finals of Festivali i Këngës and for two very different reasons:
Merland Kademi "Këtu fillon parajsa"
The song it a bit of a Frankenstein--take a bit of a James Bond theme song, mix in the drama of last years Albanian entry, and put that on top of the melody of the winner of the 2007 Contest and you have this song. Kademi sells this Balkan ballad like his life depended on it and it came in a respectable fifth.
Dr. Flori & Fabi "Jam ti!"
Albanian rap! With a string section! And bongo drums! Pretty freaking awesome, even though it does get a little sketchy towards the end. Rap is unlikely to go to Eurovision from Albania (that's Montenegro's job), but I'd love to listen to this while driving down the highway.
All in all, I enjoyed sitting down and watching another Albanian national final, and think they chose a really decent song and one that could do quite well... Here's hoping that it does...
Well, tomorrow is the day when Eurovision begins in earnest, with semifinal one.
Sadly, I'm going to be stuck at my office, crunching numbers while Europe votes for their favorite songs. So between projects I'll be furiously refreshing my web browser to find out the ten songs that will move on to the final.
And like most people who blog on the Eurovision Song Contest, I'm choosing my ten songs and we'll see how they do.
This song in my favorite of all the songs in the contest this year; I would have never thought that a Swedish language song would be that way. I hope that Ms. Karlsson will get enough jury votes to make it through to the final, because where it's placed, I don't think the viewing audience will vote for it.
Although I can see why this song can offend people, I like it and hope it makes it to the final. It has a crazy energy that no other song has this year, and that energy makes it one of my favorites.
Out of all the songs in the contest, this is the song that has the seal of approval of the lovely Janet S., which means that it's going to delight the other people at my Eurovision viewing party. Any Eurovision song that is accessible to my Gen X friends is A-OK in my book.
I have to say this song has grown on me, but I doubt that this will appeal to enough people who hear it for the first time to make it through. It's just so dramatically different than anything else, having it in the finals will
6. Russia "Party for Everybody" Buranovskiye Babushki
I love the idea of them more than I like the song, but they're sure to make it through to the final, but there's still
This is the catchiest song in the semifinal and probably my guilty secret song, because it's not the type of song I go for.
The sad thing is that I'm certain one or more of the songs on my list are going to be dropped, and I'm suspecting the two weakest songs on my list are Finland and/or Albania. One of them is going to get replaced by the "dynamic" duo from Ireland for certain, and a number of other songs could take out the other without any problem.
Welcome to the first of my "Country In Review" Eurovision posts.
The nice thing about deciding to to the "Country In Review" blog posts is that I get a chance to take a look at the songs from a country at a whole instead of looking at the songs in comparison to other songs in a given year.
(Although I have to admit that I might enjoy this because I like ranking things and have since I was a little kid.)
And since I'm anything if not methodical, I'm staring alphabetically, and that means Albania is the first country I'm reviewing.
The former Enver Hoxha Museum in Tirana. From what I understand, a good place for some high-speed tobogganing.
Albania has participated in the Eurovision Song Contest since 1994 and has always been sponsored by Radio Televizioni Shqiptar and has chosen their entrant through their year-end concert program Festivali i Këngës. Festivali is a multi-day show performed in the Pallati i Kongreseve and is pretty impressive as national finals go, with a full orchestra, high productions values, and a lot of talented Albanian singers. (I recommend looking around for clips from Festivali. It's well worth your trouble.)
And after listening to all of the Albanian entrants a number of times, I have to admit I had judged the country's songs rather harshly in the past. I had just dismissed the Albania's songs because it's in the Balkans, which in my mind means that you can send crappy songs and they'll do well because the other countries in the region will vote for you.
But after listening to the Albanian Eurovision songs, I'm shocked by the quality of them. The songs are for the most part, quite good.
So let get going:
The Worst
By far, the worst song is the Albanian entrant from 2005:
Ledina Çelo "Tomorrow I Go"
Pretty much it's a cheap rehash of the winner of the 2003's contest,
Sertab Erener "Every Way That I Can" Turkey
except that Ms. Erener has stage presence out the wazoo and singer/dancers with a great gimmick, while Çelo has refugees from a Greek vaudeville act.
The Best
I thought that this one was going to be easy. Before I decided to do this post, there was only one Albanian entry that I've ever rated highly, and it's the entrant from 2010:
Juliana Pasha "It's All About You"
Ms. Pasha is pitch perfect on the song, the backing singers are fantastic, and the person who did the lighting design for the stage in Oslo deserves an award. I like playing it loud in the summertime with the windows down in my car and it's gotten me through mile 20 of a marathon. I still don't understand why it came in sixteenth, but then again, my personal favorites never seem to do well.
But while listening to all the entrants, I had to add the the first Albanian entry to the best list as well.
Anjeza Shahini "The Image of You"
Ms. Shahini can sing can't she?
Ever since I first heard this song, I've been singing it. The chorus is super catchy and the melody is tricky enough to stay hooked in my brain.
It's still give the top prize to Pasha, but instead of by a country mile, I'll have to give it to her by a nose.
For those of you who are interested, here's a ranking of all the songs, and if you'd like to hear them all, just click this link.
4. Aurelia Gaçe "Feel the Passion" 2011 Scary stage presentation ruins song
5. Kejsi Tola "Carry Me in Your Dreams" 2009 More like nightmare, if your dream is this.
6. Luiz Eljji "Zjarr e ftohtë" 2006 Performance was really bland.
7. Frederik Ndoci "Hear My Plea" 2007 Performance was melodramatic, toomelodramatic.
8. Olta Boka "Zemrë e lamë peng" 2008 Completely forgettable.
9. Ledina Çelo "Tomorrow I Go" 2005
I don't know what you've been doing in your spare time, but in my spare time I've been paying attention to the national selections for this year's Eurovision Song Contest--learning the names of the singers in Austria's national final, listening to the songs in Iceland's first semifinal, and wondering if Jedward will be representing the Emerald Isle again.
But that doesn't really make for a good blog post.
Thankfully, two countries have already chosen their entrants, so let's take a listen:
Switzerland
After a convoluted selection process, where the German, French and Italian broadcasters entered songs into the selection, and eventually this Swiss public selected Sinplus, a duo made up of the brothers Ivan and Gabriel Broggini.
Sinplus "Unbreakable"
And after listening to this a couple times, I'm still completely underwhelmed. They come across as a college cover band you'd see at the bar on a Thursday night that were attempting to become legit by playing their own compositions. In other words, I admire their gumption, but I wish they'd go back to playing "Beautiful Day" or "Clocks".
Albania
Albania's selection process was a little less convoluted, with the winner, Rona Nishliu, winning the Festivali i Kenges, the process the country has used to select their entrant since 2004. Rona is Kosovaran, which should make for some interesting political voting, but let's take a listen to the song.
OK. She has pipes. The orchestration is pretty. But the song combined with her look is rather frighening--the high pitched wailing combined with the mess of hair and the Albanian lyrics are off-putting. Hopefully this will get fixed with a stylist and an English translation of the lyrics.
