BULGARIA

The Bulgarian entry was released on March 13th via a lyric video. The broadcaster had released regular news snippets of their internal selection journey although very little was known about the final song and act choice. Going to Kyiv is Kristian Kostov with the song “Beautiful Mess”.

The release as in the form of a lyric video which leaves no clue about staging and singing ability. However, having watched a number of videos from his appearances on various talent shows, I can see that even though very young he has a very confident and self-assured voice. Although he has the boyish looks and fashion sense of a Justin Bieber, most of the songs I’ve seen are ballads and he doesn’t appear to move a lot. I say boyish looks, he could easily look at home representing Bulgaria at jESC instead.

The song in a slow ballad with a fair bit of falsetto and has an ethnic instrumentation. It sounds very modern and radio friendly and somehow also feels very familiar. It must also be said that the start of the song is very whispery and feels like he is using a very sensitive microphone so I would be very interested to see if he performs with such delicateness. The structure is pretty simple with a verse, chorus, verse, chorus structure. The ending is a bit odd as the last 30 seconds could be used to repeat the chorus fully rather than have an instrumental and an extra line. What is also confusing is the fact that the title ‘Beautiful mess’ is a line from the verse, not the chorus. In fact, it might even have been better to end on a repeat of that line.

So here is another ballad to put into the mix but Kristan will appeal to a younger age group compared to many of the other balladeers. When I listened to this for the first time I thought it was dull and quite average. I kept on waiting for a big guild up that never came. After several listens my opinion of this has got better but not by much. It also has shades of “Believe” by Dima Bilan about it, which dates it slightly. I think the biggest comparison many have made is that after last year’s banger of a tune this is a bit of a let-down.

Throughout all the craziness of semi-final 2 this could come across as quite boring and forgettable OR come across as 3 minutes of class during a very bizarre night. The draw might be a real factor in how well this does - if it is near the end, it will stand out. Personally, I think that this is too quiet, spiritless and lethargic to do anything in the final if it did progress -unless hehas a memorable stageing trick up his sleeve

ARTIST - Kristian Kostov

SONG – Beautiful mess

MUSIC - Borislav Milanov, Sebastian Arman, Joachim Bo Persson

LYRICS - Borislav Milanov, Sebastian Arman, Joachim Bo Persson