Austria: Victor Bueno | Amen

Austria

Artist: Victor Bueno

Song: Amen

Semi Final 2: First Half

It's been a bumpy few years for Austria at the Eurovision Song Contest since Conchita Wurst's victory in 2014. This year, Victor Bueno has been given a second opportunity to improve the country's fortunes with the song Amen which is a completely different proposition to his 2020 cancelled effort, Alive. 

Where the latter took on a funky Bruno Mars/Justin Timberlake vibe, Amen gives Victor the chance to show off his accomplished vocals on a respectable breakup ballad. The lyrics are fairly repetitive, bog standard, heartbreak clichés but there is a nice progression as the song develops.

As Amen begins, Bueno is in reflective, almost claustrophobic, mood. However, around the halfway mark there is an explosive change of tone and the mood switches as if the singer has finally been been released from the shackles of a doomed relationship.

Victor delivers all of this with the angst one would expect of the material and he has sufficient charisma to attract quite a few votes. He is up against some pretty tough competition in his semi-final though, and the song probably doesn't have enough of a wow factor to push him too far up the scoreboard. 

However, I'm willing it to make the Grand Final as I believe it's good enough to earn a spot. Very much a borderline hope, though.

What are your thoughts?

 

Albania: Anxhela Peristeri | Karma

Albania

Artist: Anxhela Peristeri

Song: Karma

Semi Final 2: Second Half

Eurovision wouldn't be Eurovision without a dramatic ballad or ten, preferably sung at top volume by a woman accompanied by a dance troupe of worryingly clad beefcake. On that front, the highly attractive Anxhela Peristeri and her Festivali i Këngës staging more than delivered back in December. Albania's song is called Karma and our buxom Anxhela manages to belt out the high notes with all the subtlety of a police siren on a council estate.

 

However, the song is cleverly constructed around some big moments - both instrumentally and visually. Before ramping up to the final agonising chorus, the song begins serenely with hints of Eastern promise. It builds slowly to an instrumental mid section where Anxhela is thrown around on stage like a rag doll by said beefcake who are dressed in what must have been an end of season job lot of gold lamé.

Whether that FiK staging (see here) will make the journey to Rotterdam remains a mystery, but the original mix of Karma certainly won't. There have been some slight changes to the song, mostly to the instrumentation, since it was first performed. Nevertheless, Anxhela has the vocals to fill the Eurovision stage in May, easily good enough to suck up a few fortuitous votes. 

Great vocals and big lungs, though, will probably not help her in what has become a relatively strong semi-final, competing with the likes of  pre-competition favourites such as Switzerland, San Marino, Iceland and Greece. It's always possible that Karma may score enough points to scrape into the Top 10 but I fear that this typically melodramatic power ballad from Albania will miss the cut.

What do you think?