Selection Season Day 1: Soluna Samay and the songs so far…
Extra, extra, read all about it – HOT OFF THE PRESS! Denmark chooses Soluna Samay for Baku!
What’s that? Denmark chose on Saturday, and it’s now Wednesday? Alright…
Extra, extra, read all about it – from the paper that accidentally fell off the press during the printing process. You can’t complain. You know I don’t break news here at EBJ; I just dissect it after everyone else has moved on to something more exciting.
Anyway, back to Ye Olde Dansk MGP. Once again, I have been shocked into silence (though I am apparently still able to type) by a winning song that wasn’t even on my radar of possible winning songs. Should’ve Known Better by the abovementioned Soluna Samay pipped Jesper’s Take Our Hearts at the post to win the Danish final and secure the new Queen of Epaulets a two-way (I presume, although if she does badly Denmark may not want her back) ticket to Azerbaijan.
Soluna has the hopes of a nation resting on her shoulders...as well as Europe's entire supply of gold thread
For me, it was indeed a surprise, but not a “I just found a tarantula in my underpants” kind of surprise – it was more “I wanted a custard tart from the bakery but they only have fruit flans…well, I do like fruit flans”.
For those who don’t understand what I’m trying to say (i.e. 99% of you) allow me to translate: I love Jesper’s song, but Soluna’s is nice, and grew on me just from my initial listen to my second. There is a definite whiff of Anna Bergandahl’s This Is My Life in the air around this one, which for me is a good thing, but for those who are part of the Ban Bergendahl committee, you’ve got a livelier, rockier ballad with less Converse and more…what do you call those hats, anyway? The song is not the most exciting thing ever written, and I have a feeling it might blend into the background a bit once more songs start coming through – but at the moment, I’d say it’s the best of the three.
Speaking of The Three, it won’t be long until they are joined by forty others, a fact that must be providing hope to all the fans out there who are unenthused by what the Swiss, Albanian and Danish have come up with (in Albania’s case, feel free to replace the word ‘unenthused’ with a suitably offensive alternative). I remember last year feeling a bit disappointed when there were only a few songs and none of them were saying douze points! But as more songs became known, I got more enthusiastic. Generally speaking, by the time my CD arrives in the post there’s not a single song I’m going to skip over/skip in Shuffle once I’ve rejoined my fellow Gen Y-ers in casting aside cumbersome compact discs in favour of tiny machines that will one day rebel against human control and kill us all.
A-hem. My point is, don’t give up hope if neither Unbreakable, Suus nor Should’ve Known Better are tickling your fancy, because, in the near future, you’re probably either a) going to like them if not love them, or b) not care about them because a bunch of other countries have picked songs you do love, and that do say to you, douze points!
Now speaking of DP, here’s a squiz at my top four so far (yes, I said four…just wait):
- Cyprus
- Denmark
- Switzerland
- Albania
Do you see what I did there? Well, the Cypriot final is on tonight, and it doesn’t matter which of the three possible entries Ivi Adamou gets to sing in May – it’s still going to be my favourite so far. I’m impressed by all of them, which hopefully is a sign that Cyprus can qualify without a strangely hot Welshman representing them. The bookies and the fans are backing La La Love, and I have kinda sorta already built the title of my next post around that song…but we’ll see what happens. Don’t forget what went down in Armenia last year (and I ain’t talking J-E-S-C).
I think that’s all I’ve got to ramble on about for now, but expect a ton of such rambles to be posted over the coming months as the chaos escalates with national finals Europe-wide. You have been warned.
COMING UP: Cypriot results, slogans, theme art, a semi final decider (of sorts) AND a second installment from Norway. Yikes!
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