There are many reasons to love Georgia. People seem to be really nice there. They make amazing wine. They gave the world khachapuri, which is basically thin bread stuffed with enormous amounts of melted cheese. And they do whatever they goddamn want in Eurovision.
This year Georgia wanted to share Oto Nemsadze with the world. He is one of the many, many Eastern European wonders to have come out of The Voice Ukraine, and is already an established artist, working on his second album. He sure knows how to sing, but will his song prove popular with the European audience?
The bookies don’t seem to think so, as Georgia is at the bottom of most betting lists and has been so for a long time. But contrary to their beliefs, we quite like it. There is something very old-school Eurovision about those dramatic Eastern Europeans. It creates dreams of revolution and people’s movements and a great cultural heritage. It’s sort of banging our western generic pop music in the head, reminding us they came from a culture of Prokofiev, Tschaikowsky, Stravinsky and Khachaturian and can eat whatever Swedish name is in our hat for breakfast.
Nemsadze’s song is dramatic in every sense of the word. It builds and builds and when you think the finale is here, he throws in a key change and build a little more. We sort of wait for a bomb to go off in the end there, which might be a little issue with security. But at least we’re happy there’s some rock in the fold. And some decent lyrics.
Still, we get where the bookies are at. This won’t cash in on 12s in an audience that has been too much trained to like the Swedes. And it will most likely struggle to reach Saturday as well. But we’re glad it’s going to Tel Aviv. May he only bring some khachapuri.
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