Sunday, May 13, 2012

Rehearsals: Day 1: Part 1 Montenegro-Greece

Rehearsals today are running about an hour and a half late, and based on previous ESC's this is unlikely to change. As I am not actually in Baku I will be blogging here as videos and opinions come through. I will be updating this page as the day goes on. I don't embed videos onto the blog as I find it slows it down but if you click on the link you should get a video of the rehearsal. I'll try to use eurovision.tv videos but they take a while to appear so you may notice some videos from escXtra who look to be shaping up to have the best coverage so far this year.

Montenegro - Video of rehearsal
No one really knew what to expect from Montenegro as it was never on live TV. This is one of the few songs where vocals really don't matter. I would say though that the overall staging of the song looks very messy and this seems to be the general view.No expects this to qualify and that is my view also but there is a little voice in my head asking me if I'm right in saying that.

IcelandVideo of rehearsal
I had forgotten just how amazing the Icelandic entry was. The rehearsal was really strong and seems to have cleared up any doubts about the song. It is just a pleasure to listen to it live. The back drop is Icelandic mountains which really impressive and keeps in tune with the Icelandicness of it all. The backing singers really lift this and it all looks like the usually excellently produced Icelandic entry. Most people seem to be identifying  this as a definite qualifier.

Greece - Video of rehearsal
Well at least it's not in a shopping center. When I first saw the video of the rehearsal I have to say that I though it now fits so much into the standard Greek entry. Yes this does remind me a lot of other Greek entries. But it still lacks anything tangible that will push it on. In my opinion My Number One would not do very well in this day and age. Lead vocals are fairly poor. This was a problem which I had flagged earlier but the general consensus is that Greece needs more backing singers. But then again remember the shock we all got when we saw Greece won last years semi-final?

Latvia's rehearsal is running a bit later than expected and I have to pop out for a while. More reaction later this afternoon.

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