FYR MACEDONIA

The Macedonian entry was released on March 10th in the form of the official video.

Back in November it was announced that Jana Burčeska had been internally selected and that her song would be unveiled at a later date. Her song is called “Dance alone”.

The video release of this is very interesting as many fans have been captured by its story. In short the old lady uses virtual reality glasses to watch herself, and presumably her late husband, when they were young – or possibly a reincarnation of how they would be if they were young now. These clips are interspersed with her doing normal things around the house, which emphasises her loneliness. It is a very strong visual, a great piece of storytelling and works well with the song and reel you into the whole package.

Her song is a modern radio tune with more than a passing nod to the electronica of the 80s. The vocals in the verses have been altered slightly to give it a slightly dull, old fashioned far away finish. This effect really works with the video but I am not quite sure how or if this could be replicated on stage. The verses are quite stylised feeling like she’s talking rather than singing and so require good diction. The chorus is quite catchy as the words are simplistic and tune is repetitive and the movement between verse to chorus to verse feels really seamless.

This is a very pleasing entry and not one you would expect from Macedonia.

My issue is that the video has overshadowed the song. Although many people have liked the quality of the song, I have seen and heard more chat about the narrative of the video. Now although this will give more footfall to the official video my worry will be more about the stage show at Eurovision. I very much doubt that this narrative could be transferred to the stage and having the video as a background would just not work. I almost think that any stage show just wouldn’t work as well as the video does. This twinned with the fact that the vocals probably won’t sound the same on the night and that semi 2 is more diverse, means it could be more of a struggle. If this had been in semi 1 this would easily qualify.

ARTIST - Jana Burčeska

SONG – Dance alone

MUSIC - Joacim Persson, Alex Omar, Florence A, Bobi-Leon Milanov

LYRICS - Joacim Persson, Alex Omar, Florence A, Bobi-Leon Milanov