Try harder next year, Moldova

What do you get when you mix a former ESC participant with Azerbaijan’s stage gimmick from last year and add an enormous amount of hair styling products? Let us present Moldova:

Moldova is actually one of our absolute favorite countries in ESC. We love them for being whacky and tacky, for daring to give us something different and for understanding the true essence of entertaining the masses. We feel like kids about to enter the fairground with our pockets full of coins every ESC season when we press play on the youtube video for the first time once Moldova has selected their entry. Will it bring us an epic sax guy? A girl on a unicycle? Backing singers with costumes so cool and futuristic not even JP Gaultier could have done it better? We are virtually about to burst like bloody balloons!

Safe to say we weren’t exactly over the Moon with excitement after the first listen to what the Moldovans decided to dish up with in Malmö. It seems like the country has hit a bit of a creative drought and even though it disappoints us, we’re big enough to give them a break and realize that it’s not easy to hit the bulls’ eye every year and please a couple of demanding and spoiled ESC bloggers.

So what’s wrong with “O Mie”? Well first of all it’s a ballad. We do not want ballads from Moldova. We want a brassy explosion of ethnic rhythms and beats we can jump around to on the dance floor and a catchy chorus we can jodle along to. Secondly it’s a mish mash of recycled elements, partly stolen from past entries. Like they picked up Sabina “duck beaker” Babayeva’s frock from the discount rack and placed Pasha Parfeny behind the grand piano in a rented tuxedo, because they suspect the song not to be strong enough on its own merit. Pasha is majorly hot, and we don’t mind having him in the background, but it just feels slightly desperate, and far from as inspired as we expect Moldova to be.

The song is also running on empty. The English lyrics and Aliona Moon’s pronunciation are beyond ridiculous and luckily the team behind the entry has realized this themselves and actually announced that it will be performed in Romanian in Malmö. That can only be an improvement. Besides that we don’t think this can be saved from an unusually weak result. We hope the Moldovans will learn their lesson and come back with the usual gold next year.

3 comments

  1. The Romanian lyrics are really nice, but the song itself is average and her vocals are quite weak also. Romania and Moldova have a big chance to miss the grand final this year.

    1. We’re not too optimistic about Moldova and Romania’s chances either, but both entries might actually sneak through! Romania for its sky high kitsch factor, and Moldova for its stage gimmicks and votes from the ballad lovers. Hard to predict.

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