This year there have been teenagers and man child's performing and you would be hard put to tell the difference. Their vocal prowess often severely limited in range. Some can really only bellow from the top of their larynx and are utterly lost to an asthmatic whisper with anything requiring greater subtlety or sensitivity. It is worthy of note that these are all gentlemen, with somewhat enfeebled singing voices and presences.
DENMARK - Reilly
You would never guess this guy was twenty five years old, knock ten years off and call him a 'twink'. If 'he' is indeed the preferred pronoun here. Like the song itself, there is a degree of ambiguity surrounding Reilly. But for all his moving around and through the stage set, lying prone on the floor appears to be a preferred singing position. Either he couldn't firmly hit the right notes, or the tune itself was actually so intrinsically vague and elusive you have to assiduously hunt it down. There was only the merest suggestion of a melody being wafting through his vocal chords. I waited and waited for something to catch my ear, a hook line or a beautiful ascension of notes. But nothing happened. This was just as pink gem splattered aural void.
GREECE - Victor Vernicos
Now this young chap was indeed sixteen at the moment of this his first musical offence. But no one has yet arrested him for it. But boy does he need to return to drama school and learn how to sell a song. Here he is dressed in kakhi coloured gym wear, bobbing up and down repeatedly, or jumping in the air, as though someone has taken his trampoline away. Poor lad doesn't know quite what else to do. The boy either cannot hold a note, is under rehearsed, or doesn't know the song at all. There is, of course, the outside possibility that there actually is no song to be learnt. Poor Victor having to resort to coughs, whines and muttering phrases under his breath. Hoping to get to the end of this nightmare without anyone clocking that they had only a phantom song all along..
SERBIA - Luke Black
And so we go from underselling to overselling. Performances far far too high in concept and far far too low in song quality, are no strangers to Eurovision. Quite what this one was about I could not fathom. The least they could do was to make it obvious, you would have thought. It is however presented with such great solemnity and an implication of a profound, if not revelatory, meaning. Here is Luke in his new romantic blouse without a shred of a tongue in cheek, lying on a loosely formed white dental palate. Surrounded by a gaggle of subhumans with no facial features who pull and writhe in torment until Luke relieves them of their vacuum cleaner pipes. Portentous? No, say not so!
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