Rehearsals: Day 1: Part 3 Switzerland - Finland

Rehearsals continued today in earnest and videos have now appeared for them all. But now onto the last three.

Switzerland - Rehearsal Video
Switzerland have come on in leaps and bounds since the national finals in December [then again they've had since December]. The staging is really well done, the vocals and more importantly diction have stepped up to the mark and the whole thing is looking rather polished. The general consensus is that this has indeed improved but no matter what I read today I still think that this just screams non-qualifier. I don't fully know why that is though.

Belgium - Rehearsal Video 
Despite some peoples arguments this is a song I have a soft spot for. I think that this has really come up in the rehearsals. The staging of the whole song is wonderfully understated and I think that Iris has the voice to carry this song off. Interestingly there is a very little we learned today. The rehearsal has been very similar to the national final performance. Possibly the closest so far today.

Finland - Rehearsal Video
Finland were the last to take to the stage for rehearsals today. The song is vocally good but coming after Belgium this is a lot less dramatic. To be honest this song was one that I have really loved but today I felt that it stopped short of actually coming up to the mark. Many acts have impressed me today but Finland really has not. This might come up a bit in second rehearsals but at the moment I'm not feeling it.

Belgium Opts For A Simpler Song.

By the time you read this I will be gone..........to rural Ireland. So by one o'clock tomorrow I will hopefully have enough reviewing done that I have the blog backed up into next week but we shall see how it goes. So today I turn my attention to Belgium, who will be represented by Iris. In a very short, two song national final Belgium decided that Iris should go to Baku with the song Would You?

This is definitely an interesting song. While at times it might seem like a fairly boring and predictable song it is performed very well. The song unfortunately doesn't really build up to much but instead stays fairly static with a bridge in the middle where it goes all soft. Performance wise, Iris is actually able to do most things that you want in a song like this. However I really think that the dress makes her look like a 1950's school girl and I think if she wants to go for a final qualification she will have to be a little more edgy about the performance. This may mean that she has to add a couple of extra people to the stage, but that may not be a bad thing.

The song Would You? has received a mixed reaction from fans. I think that even though it is a simple [and I really mean simple] midtempo song, it does offer the listener a huge amount. Lyrically this may not be the most out there but as was pointed out by Miss Disco over on Eurotrash Freaks; Iris is only 16 yet she is singing about a very complex relationship. I think unless people were very nitpicky they would not pick up on that but  you never know.

While this might not be out standing when you put it up alongside the likes of Nadine Beiler last year, it still is a reasonable song. More importantly it is in a semi-final of very up tempo songs with no one covering the conservative jury types. That's where a song like this is going to pick up votes from. However Belgium are in an unfortunate position of having very few neighbours in this semi-final so I think more likely than not they will not qualify.

Verdict: Personally I think that this is quite a good song but it has limitations and probably will not make the final. The biggest problem I found while writing this review was that there was nothing to write about, which for me means that it is boring - Anyhow I still think that it is a good song, simple yes, but in a way that doesn't always show up at Eurovision anymore.

Grade: B-

Eurovision Overload!

It seems that much has happened in Eurovision since I left on Friday and to be honest I'm hardly able to keep up with it all but here are my thoughts:

• May as well start on a positive note. Azerbaijan have presented their Eurovision entry sung by Sabina. I really thing this is good. It might not win (it has an outside chance) but really it is quite nice. You can watch the video here.
• The widely anticipated entry from the UK was released today, you can listen to it here. I will have much more on this in a later post. 
• As many videos arrive in we are seeing a couple of songs being tweaked a little bit. I don't really pay much attention to this as the changes are rarely noticeable. However Belarus have done a pretty big overhaul of their song which does help it a small little bit. You can hear there song here.
• Albania have cut down their song to three minutes and presented it in a video that to be honest looks like is out of a horror film. I still think that it is a strong song. The video is here.
• Belgium have presented their song Would You by Iris. It's a fairly basis ballad and I can't see it going to far but we'll see what juries do in semi-final 1. You can listen to the song here.

Finally I hope you all enjoyed St. Patrick's Day while some people decided to do some odd things (Green Ice Tea and Jedward?, seriously). I had a more traditional one involving buying 20kgs of seed potatoes.