Romania: Amnesia by Roxen
Amnesia is a song that deals with pressures of modern performance focused societies and the impossibility to achieve “it all” as the lyrics say. Comparison to the busy and ever more demanding world may lead to low self-esteem and feeling of inadequacy when the usually self-defined (but also exogenous) criteria of perfection are not met – something that almost anyone can relate to. The song is a surprisingly nice piece that keeps to its focal message without meandering too much. Overall style of the music video is something in between of emo kid style of 2000’s (imagine Arvil Lavigne around the time of ‘Sk8er boi’) and more modern version of emo style represented by Billie Eilish.
Review by Sanni Silvasti
Australia: Technicolour by Montaigne
First hearing of the song left me annoyed and made me consider insulting my future country of residence with a prickly critical review. Second time hearing the song I read the lyrics and changed my mind on most of my squeamishness; Aussie accent and elongated artsyish vocals had distracted me from a pretty nice message of the song. Further listening made me also grant that Montaigne can really sing. What finally made me box the compass with ‘Technicolour’ were the two lines in the lyrics “Everything is frustrating, Everything moves along faster than I can relate to” – my thought exactly! The song is weakened only by the shouted few lines right after the ones mentioned previously, and also maybe little bit due to the fact that the line “time to take off your cloaks” seriously sounds like Montaigne was urging us to take off our clothes!
Review by Sanni Silvasti
Estonia: The lucky one by Uku Suviste
Well, here’s a proper Eurovision contest song! Smells like nothing, tastes like nothing – did I just hear something?? A breakup song is always a dodgy choice for Eurovision since they tend to be monotonous and repetitious in character. My suspicion is that this one will be forgotten by the viewers in the midst of all the other performances and will not make it through semi-finals.
Review by Sanni Silvasti