08 April 2016

Eurovision 2016: Review: Finland: Sandhja: Sing It Away

Sandhja / Eurovision 2016 / Finland
Sandhja will be singing away in Stockholm
When rockers Lordi won the Eurovision Song Contest for Finland for the first (and only) time in 2006, it finally felt as if the country had graduated to become one of the elite of the competition.

However, that promise has wilted somewhat over the past decade with only Softengine's 2014 effort making any kind of impression.

In the intervening years, Finland has tried pure pop, indie rock and even punk rock to try and win over voters, but all to no avail. This year their entry is provided by Sandhja who will take the funky dance-floor filler Sing It Away to Stockholm.

UMK was once again the local platform used to determine the country's finalist but, as it turned out, Sandhja was not the most convincing of winners. Scoring only enough votes with the public to secure third place, it was the ten juries  - composed of various sections of Finnish society - which elevated her to the winner's podium.

Could the Finnish public's unwillingness to vote for Sing It Away be the fact that this type of performance has been heard numerous times before without overwhelming success? After all, Finland is the land of the guitar and the rockers who wield them isn't it, not a country you immediately identify as clubland.

To give Sandhja her due, she knows how to use a stage - commanding it throughout the three minutes of the song. This professional approach gives a little more gravitas to a song that feels as if it has been dragged kicking and screaming out of the early 1990s - remember Ride on Time by Black Box?

It has exactly the same flavour as that song and should put Semi-Final 1 in a party mood when it kicks off the show in May. Whether it is memorable enough after seventeen more songs have followed is very questionable. Semi-Final 1 is tough enough anyway this year; Sandhja and her crew will really need to stand out if her retro dance tune has any hope of qualifying.

What do you think?

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