Pushing buttons and saving the world

Hey hey hey, it's Eurosunday time again! This week seven songs were selected/released. First, on Tuesday Israel chose their entry by Teapacks, called "Push the Button". I have to say, I'm not a fan of this song. First, it is too political for a show that is supposed to be entertainment. Second, it just goes on way too long. I know that it's three minutes but it feels like twice that. Greece chose "Yassou Maria" by Sarbel. It's a good, fun song that makes you want to dance, but I don't know if it's winning material. Also, the "shake it up"s in the chorus make me worry that it might be too close to the Turkish song.

Andorra's song, "Salvem el món" by Anonymous, was released. On their MySpace these boys list blink-182 as an influence, and it shows. It's a pretty good imitation of their style. The only bad part is that they are copying the blink-182 of ten years ago ("Dude Ranch" era), so it could sound dated to some. But even back then, blink-182 could write a good melody, and Anonymous don't seem to have that level of skill yet. I think they need time to work on their songwriting. This year, however, I see it getting votes from teenage boys perhaps.

On Saturday, three songs were selected. The first, and my favorite, was "My Story" by Sopho Khalvashi for Georgia's first entry. It's a quirky and dramatic song that with the right stage performance could do well. The next one was Dragonfly featuring Dado Topic for Croatia with their song "Vjerujem u ljubav". I was hoping that Croatia would pick a song that I liked, and I was disappointed when this was selected. It's yet another rock song, but isn't much better or worse than the others selected. Finally, the long pre-selection in Lithuania came to close and the winner was 4fun's song "Love or Leave". It's a pleasant sounding song that would make good background music for an afternoon at home, but it just isn't interesting and memorable enough to make an impact in a competition.

Today, Bosnia & Herzegovina unveiled their song, "Rijeka bez imena" by Marija Sestic. With Ireland's song, it is one of my two favorite ballads of this year so far. Like the titular river, it starts off small with just the singer, a guitar and some drums, and as the songs go on more instruments and voices are added until the sound is big and dramatic. Definitely my favorite song selected this week, and a good way to end the weekend.

Before I go on to list next week's group of finals, I want to mention Sweden's Andra Chansen round that took place Saturday. I was pleasantly surprised that my two favorite out of that group of eight ("För att du finns" and "Vågar du, vågar jag") made it through to the final! That means, out of ten songs in the final, I like and would be happy with the victory of five (the other three are "The Worrying Kind", "Cara Mia", and "Samba Sambero"). Okay, maybe I'd be disappointed if "Samba Sambero" made it over the other four, but still, it's a very strong final that I will be excited to hear the outcome of.

Next week is the last week that I will be covering the national selections before I go on to my ranking of all the songs like I did last year (which means that you'll have to wait until the ranking for my opinion of the UK's song, as well as any other country's song that is revealed after next weekend). It will also be the week that I start spring break, so I have a full week to sit around and perfect the order of the songs and write the little reviews because I know I won't have time for it later.

Next week there will be finals in Czech Republic, France, Germany, Portugal, Serbia, Sweden, and Ukraine. Also, the internally selected song for Turkey (which I can't wait to hear) will be presented. Songs for Austria, Hungary, and Russia still haven't been presented yet, so hopefully we will hear those this week too.