Montenegro in familiar landscapes

Ok, we admit not to have been the keenest supporters of Balkan ballads on this blog. However, after having watched BBC’s cut-and-dried 60th anniversary show the other night we have come to the realization that Eurovision without it is pretty much worthless. The anniversary show is perhaps worth a separate blog post, but please bear with us when we use this opportunity to point out just how wrong it was to leave out the history defining winner Molitva and Lane Moje. It’s beyond us, after all this competition is about so much more than just Scandinavian schlagers, Johnny Logan and a couple of gender benders.

Thankfully Montenegro comes to the rescue and gives this year’s line-up a much-needed injection with a brash and larger than life Balkan belter. Knez is a well-established and popular artist across the Balkans and he’s bound to secure lots of votes from friendly neighbors and homesick diaspora across Europe. Moreover he stays so true to the recipe of what makes a good Eurovision entry in this genre it’s almost moving. We have done a bit of analyzing, comparing Adio to a few similar previous entries and there’s definitely the same pattern here, which have proved to be quite successful in the past.

To sum up, it’s pretty much all there:

  • The intro that goes on and on, until you realize it’s the actual song building up to one big grand finale, and then full stop
  • It’s in minor key of course, ensuring the proper melancholic mood, heartbreak and sorrow is not something to be cheerful about!
  • Nothing new or fancy here, it is what it is and what it’s always been since the middle ages and beyond
  • It remains in its original language, heaven forbid translating a Balkan ballad into English
  • Lots of potent air grabbing by the lead singer throughout the performance, slightly reminiscent of a colorful bird’s mating ritual
  • Gorgeous feminine women dressed in masculine suits apparently having no other business than pouting sultry into the camera
  • Gorgeous women playing traditional instruments we don’t know the names of
  • A promo video with sweeping images of gorgeous landscapes, probably sponsored by the national tourist board, making us check air fares to said destination
  • No ironic distance or tongue in cheek attitude in sight, Eurovision is to be taken SERIOUSLY!

And not to forget, it’s penned by Eurovision God Željko Joksimović for crying out loud, what can possibly go wrong? We can hardly wait to hear the gay hands in the air disco remix at Euroclub.

Ok, just forget everything we said in this post about how Eurovision is supposed to be taken seriously.

4 comments

  1. You girls rock! Russia and Poland were particularly briliant as well. Eurovision would simply not be the same without these litle occasional injections of awsomeness 🙂

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