Day 5 . Russia, Czech Republic, Cyprus and Austria

Yesterday I spent the day at the Euro Fan Café / Euroclub (it really is just the same thing this year, just different names depending on the hour of the day) and watched some meet & greets. More about that later. Now back in the press centre to watch some rehearsals.


Austria

Another singer who is completely alone on stage although we can very clearly hear her backing vocals. The staging backingdrop is interesting though and she carries it off alone pretty well. But there's also no reason whatsoever why the backing singers couldn't just as well have been somewhere on stage. It would have worked nicely with this staging. And would have made it stand out a lot more among all the solo singers being completely alone on stage.

Zoe's pink strapless princess dress suits her well. It would have been awkward in any other performance, but in this fairytale backdrop world it looks nice. The performance is visually memorable, but the question is whether it's really exciting enough to give the song that extra boost.

Cyprus

The song starts with a close-up of Francois. So close that we can even see him spitting while singing. But he's handsome and he's got nice arms, so all is forgiven.
He's wearing a very lose flowy knee-lenght black sleeveless cardigan, over a tank top and black trousers. It looks very modern and fashionable, yet suits the rock feel of the song. The other members are mainly in black as well, but they're in the dark most of the time so we don't see them a lot.

Vocally it sounds fine, but it's hard to hear in the press centre as the volume is low and there's a lot of noise coming from San Marino's press conference.

Second run-through, and we can hear things a bit better. Basically, he's not the best singer in the world, but it's perfectly adequate for the song. Of all the rock-inspired entries this year, I think this will be the most approachable to the general viewers. As it has a very distinct and memorable melody. And the staging isn't too weird or gimmicky, so it might stand out among all the technically advanced entries.

There's a lot of armpit flashing going on. And (unlike Moldova) he's kept just the right amount of hair there. It's trimmed, but not clean-shaven. And no stubble. 


Czechia

The colours of the stage really look great. Blue and pink. She has an interesting necklace that looks like a robe with some sort of big rock crystals attached to it. The dress is a plain white top with a peplum around the hips. And a white flowy bottom, which catches the colours of the lights.

She sings it more or less perfectly, even if holding back a little bit. Everything is simply both very pleasing both for the eyes and the ears. I dare to say that of all the pop ballads this year, this one works the best on stage.

As so many others, this one hides the backing singers. But unlike most of the others that like to pretend that their singer can produce 6 different voices at the same time, I think it kind of works for this one. Due to the darkness of the song and due to how the stage is lit, it doesn't come across that weird that she's alone on it.

Russia

It's pretty much the same as before, with the difference that Sergey is a lot more sweaty today. I still think the performacne is way too much. Especially as the projection screen doesn't always work perfectly. The "steps" that are supposed to be invisible, are very much visible. And the projections are a little bit off-sync sometimes. Still time to fix that though.

If this performance had been in any other year, it would REALLY have stood out. But since about half of the entries this year are using some kind of 3D projections or holograms, this staging may not come across as impressive as they had hoped. But Sergey does really manage to sing it well enough in spite of all the climbing he has to do. Something not everyone using similar staging effects manage to do. And I'm pretty sure it's by far competent enough to get the votes of everyone who already love Sergey and the song. In the countries where he's already popular I can't see him getting much lower scores than a 12. The problem is though, so far I haven't really heard anyone who isn't a Eurovision fan or a Sergey fan say that they like the song... And will this performance convince them?