Eurovision 2015: Albania: Elhaida Dani: Diell

Elhaida Dani

Diell (Sun) sung by Elhaida Dani has won the ticket to represent Albania at the 2015 Eurovision Song Contest in Vienna. The song was among eighteen compositions vying for the win at the annual Festivali i Këngës (Song Festival) held in Tirana.

The three-hour show was the culmination of two epic semi-finals, during which twenty-six songs were performed.

In the final, Elhaida Dani was the last to take the stage and, after a very dramatic performance, her victory was revealed to be a near landslide. Of the seven jury members, including Albania's 2012 represenative Rona Nishliu, six of them gave Diell their top score.

A resounding victory is nothing new for Ms Dani, of course. In 2013, she participated in Italy's version of The Voice, winning the show with more than two thirds of the public vote.

Can she repeat the feat in Austria in May, 2015? My hunch is that she won't be able to do it again, particularly with this song.

I've listened to it a couple of times and I'm still not really sure why it won the national final. Elhaida Dani's vocals are great, so no complaint there. They're powerful, dramatic and they soar. The problem is with what she is singing.

As is usual with the entries from Albania, they start off their lives in their native language. That's fine, but it's already a barrier for a non-native speaker. So, one is reliant on the melody and the overall performance.

It's always a positive to have the music provided by a live orchestra and at no time did Elhaida Dani appear as if she was battling with it. She's obviously a more than competent stage performer, who is also easy on the eye.

Unfortunately, Diell is a very pedestrian power ballad with no obvious hook to it. Despite the singer's emotional input which endeavours to involve the audience, the melody goes nowhere and the whole package ends up sounding like a second-rate Disney tune.

Without some much needed changes, Albania could easily become a casualty of the semi-finals once again.

What do you think?

[Update: Diell has been withdrawn and replaced with I'm Alive as the Albanian entry. A review will appear once the the new song is made public.]

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