Staging is everything, Estonia

Can 79% of the voters in Estonia be wrong? Probably not.

Winning the national final with such a massive margin can only mean one thing. It’s undeniably a good song. Well, it could also mean that all the other contenders were rubbish, to be honest we haven’t spent much time trying to find out.

Goodbye To Yesterday was one of those songs that emerged as one of the biggest pre-contest favorites in the fanworld, long before the Estonians had even gotten around to choosing it. Being surrounded by such a big buzz must be wonderful and encouraging for the artists Elina Born & Stig Rästa. However, this won’t count for much when they enter the stage in Wiener Stadthalle, and sadly it can end up working against them as being a favorite creates a lot of pressure. Only the most professional and seasoned artists manage to let this pressure work in their favor instead of being weighed down.

And judging by the live performance in Eesti Laul, it looks like we’re in for a rocky ride with this duo. Despite the fact that Stig Rästa has several attempts behind him trying to represent Estonia in Eurovision, he didn’t look comfortable taking center stage. Elina wasn’t born yesterday, but is still young and inexperienced and let the nerves get the better of her. As a result there was no chemistry whatsoever between the two of them, and the performance looked awkward, detached and cold. But let’s not forget that these sentiments fits very well with the message of the song, so if this were the intended effect we’d say they are rather good at it.

This one is hard to predict. Once again the nifty Estonians show up with a high quality entry to be proud of and for what it’s worth, we really like it. The recorded version is stellar and a top ten placing would be well deserved. However a nervous live performance with ropey vocals can put the juries off, and the moody, sinister vibes can further estrange the voters.

– WTF are you looking at, do you think we actually LIKE participating in the Eurovision Song Contest? We don’t even like each other.

3 comments

  1. My non-Eurovision friends love this so I suppose it will do just fine. I agree about the live performance. I hope they really worked on that because it didn’t came across too well in the national final. I think it might end up in the top 5, but I can’t see this doing better or same as The Netherlands in 2014.

    1. We can see why this is being compared to last year’s Dutch entry, but Ilse De Lange & Waylon had a warm and confident stage presence and the staging was superb. We can’t see how the Estonians can pull something similar out of their hats. They are clever, but not magicians.

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