Belgian wonderchild

Wow. Just wow. How old did you say this kid was? As much as we love and adore the Eurovision Song Contest, let’s be honest and admit that it’s not exactly a venue for hatching out the biggest and brightest stars of the future. With a few notable exceptions it’s rather a place where has-beens can attempt to revive their fading careers, middle-of-the-road decent artists can flourish for a few months just long enough to keep the public’s interest and where one-hit wonders blast into the center of attention only to disappear into everlasting obscurity the minute the closing credits are done.

So what’s up with this Belgian guy? Like a post-millennium Terence Trent D’Arby, only a whole lot better and even funkier, Loïc Nottet enters the scene and grabs our immediate and undivided attention from the first beat. The whole package being so complete, so well thought through and professionally executed we find it hard to believe this, well we can only call him boy, is only 19, and being heavily involved in all aspects from composing the music, collaborating on the choreography and creating the visual expression for the upcoming performance in Vienna.

We can only conclude that this must be a uniquely talented young man, whom oddly enough has chosen the Eurovision Song Contest as a launch pad for what must be the start of a long and successful career. Clearly ESC needs him more than the other way around, and we can only count our lucky stars since he will be in Vienna to sprinkle his magic pixie dust over us.

There’s sense of urgency about Rhythm Inside, which makes us listen sitting on the edge of our chairs, ready to start jumping up and down and dance wildly around, only we can’t because we’re so taken by Loïc’s strong, yet childish face we can’t take our eyes away from the screen. Rolling r’s have never been sexier and the amount of brash attitude and young hubris coupled with a trembling insecurity looming beneath it all is finely tuned and refinement at its finest. The performance is intriguing, the song is fresh and above all it’s bold and deliciously irreverent to send an entry like this to ESC.

This is one of our absolute favorites in the 2015 running and we need to believe that Europe will recognize real talent when it’s staring them in their eyes and shown in such abundance as here. And for the record, we forgive the Belgians for the oedipal and embarrassing display from last year when they return with this gift of nature.

Our only minor reservation being a slight concern over whether it’s possible to transfer this powerhouse into an equally powerful live performance. Knowing how weak and unimpressive late-teen boys in various talent shows can come across when it comes to the crunch performing live and competing for televotes. But Loïc seems to operate in an entirely different universe from the rest of the bunch, so our worries are probably groundless quibble.