Day 5 - France, Spain

Spain

Before the rehearsal

I don't think it should be difficult to do this vocally. We know she has a group of backing singers (which I hope we get to see). The big problem with this song is the really long 2nd verse. I hope they've found a way to make that look interesting visually so that people don't get bored during that part of the song.

Rehearsal

Where to start! I'll start with the most important part: Remember how in the preview video there's a weird pause where the music stops just before the second verse?
Something similar is happening here. While Barei is doing her sneaker-dance in the first chorus, she suddenly falls over and lands on the floor. The music stops and we all thought she had fallen and hurt herself and that's why the music stops. But then she just starts singing the second verse all of a sudden and the music kicks in.
The press centre were all quite startled by this, and then reacted with a bit cheer when realising that it was part of the act.

So, regarding the rest. Barei is in a short silver dress, and her backing singers are standing behind her in black and silver outfits. The stage is bright and with flashing colours. It all comes across as very happy and joyful. Vocally Barei was maybe holding back a bit, but fine. The backing singers are mostly fine. However, there's one of them (let's just pretend it's Brequette) who is absolutely SHOUTING the "Say yay yay yay" bit as if she's a peacock that just reached puberty. It's quite reminiscent of Israel 85. So let's hope they turn her down in the mix. A lot.

Mostly Barei and her backing singers are basically dancing on the main stage. Then towards the end Barei walks the catwalk to the satellite stage and finishes there.

I got a very good feeling from this. They have so much fun on stage, and Barei looks very charming and likeable. As long as they can sort out the vocal problems, this performance should be able to lift the song quite well. Hard to say whether the fake-fall gimmick will work well or not, but it will at least wake up the viewers and grab their attention.

France

Before the rehearsal

This is a very difficult song to sing. It's got a lot of falsetto parts in the chorus and not a lot of moments to breath. And throughout the whole song there's backing vocals singing along with Amir. So the singing and the mix of the backing vocals will be the big key to being able to recreate this live.


Rehearsal

They're definitely going for the "less is more" approach here. Amir is completely alone on stage. The backing singers are hidden somewhere, and so far they're not very loud in the mix.
He's wearing a plain grey suit over a white t-shirt. And white sneakers with no socks.
The stage is quite well-lit and the graphics have a space theme. There's a lot of stars, and towrds the end of the song the moon (or some other planet) appears on the floor underneath Amit.
He's up-beat and energetic, but there's not really any choreography going on. He's basically simply standing there singing the song. And loving it.

Vocally the first run wasn't perfect. He sings the you-oh-oh-oh-oh bits but they were a bit off-tune. And there were some other parts that weren't great either. But we have to keep in mind that it's a rehearsal.

Basically, this is the POLAR OPPOSITE to Russia.  While Russia has thrown in just about everything they possible can, France has a very simple and plain performance. It could be risky, but it makes me think of Lena's performance in 2010. It isn't similar, but it's the same kind of "I'll just stand here and sing the song, because the song is good enough on it's own" attitude.


Second run-through. Vocally it's a bit better, and the backing vocals are louder in the mix. But there's still some parts that sound really terrible. In the last chorus he tries to do some ad libs that are way too high for him and just turn into a strangled-cat moment. Hopefully he'll notice this in the viewingroom and ditch it.  Because he sings this just fine whenever he sticks to the basic melody, but whenever he strays from it, it goes terribly wrong.