Create Something Timeless?

For the second week of Eurovision ranking, here are 5 songs to put in your Easter basket, but they might be more licorice than chocolate.

35. FYR Macedonia

Daniel Kajmakoski - "Autumn Leaves"

Reaction: This song lost something in the translation to English. The melody is boring and the production in the chorus is weird, too sing-alongy when it shouldn't be.

Best Part: Pre-chorus

Rating: 2/5

34. Czech Republic

Marta Jandová and Václav Noid Bárta - "Hope Never Dies"

Reaction: This is cool in a early-2000s mall metal ballad way. It's a little too slow and pop to have an edge.

Best Part: Key change to last chorus

Rating: 2/5

33. United Kingdom

Electro Velvet - "Still in Love With You"

Reaction: While the UK's song doesn't come close to capturing the heights of current British music, it does use the English language better than the average Eurovision song. The lyrics are cute and clever in a faux-Cole Porter way. However, the scatting in a bad Louis Armstrong impression is terrible. The song also goes on at least 20 seconds too long.

Best Part: "You’re bound to get sneezes/Or nasty diseases"

Rating: 2/5

32. Malta

Amber - "Warrior"
Reaction: While this ballad is competently sung, the melody is unexciting, especially compared to other similar ballads this year.
Best Part: "Create something timeless/Never look back, the past is the past/I had no choice but to become a warrior"
Rating: 2/5

31. Cyprus

John Karayiannis - “One Thing I Should Have Done”

Reaction: This simple, quiet ballad is bland at first, but its beauty develops only after many repeated listenings. The a capella part grinds the song to a halt and wrecks the momentum, and its just too quiet and unexciting to strike me as a contender. This is the kind of song I am usually wrong about (“Me and My Guitar,” “Calm After the Storm”), so maybe it will be amazing live and I'll eat my words again.

Best Part: "The road that once was paved with gold/Has turned a rusty shade/Of all the saddest colours in the world"
Rating: 2/5