Stefan Raab is back in the saddld and he’s promising to make German national finals interesting. I hope he isn’t lying and Germany can come up with a winner.
For some reason, Germany decided to go with a Supernova-style format with one semi-final and a final. This is 100% jury, and the final will be 100% televote. I sure do hope none of my favourites will get eliminated here.
Less cringy lyrics would’ve been appreciated because the melody is really good. I just recoil every time I listen to this and can’t get over them. This is another reason why I prefer lyrics in national languages - they’re easier to ignore.
Since I’m a lot more tolerant towards ballads, I can appreciate this. It’s quite lowkey, but in a nice and pleasant way.
I have no idea why this didn’t qualify, as this is by far the most casual-friendly flavour of metal. I know that some people will say, “Oh blah blah, nu metal isn’t metal”, but all I can do is roll my eyes at them. And sure, the mixing of the live performance was horrible, but the parts that were audible were good. And it’s not like this was based on televoting. From what I heard, they sounded fine in the TV studio, so the juries probably weren’t influenced by that.
I’m sure some people would be put off by his raspy voice, but I quite liked it. I think he conveys the emotion well and the live backing elevates it even more. Sure, it’s a little generic, but in a pleasant and enjoyable way.
Some songs start off poorly and get better as they go on. Other songs start really well and get worse. This is absolutely the case of the latter. The fun tropical vibes and her warm performance knocked me away right from the start, but then it degraded into repeating “youuuuuuu” and “yoooouuuuuuuuuuuuuu” closer to the end, and I lost interest in the song. It’s a shame.
For somr reason, the artists are also singing covers as well as their original song. I’ll only talk about the cover if I actually find it interesting in some way.
They chose to perform Waterloo as a cover, and I have to say, I’m tired of the song so much after last year.
I didn’t enjoy their actual song too much, either. It had a very Britpoppy sound (which is a genre I’m fond of) but in a bad and charmless way. The live vocals didn’t endear me to it either.
He’s rather charming and I enjoyed listening to him singing. The song itself is fairly cute and I kinda enjoyed it, but it’s also quite unremarkable though and I can’t say I care about it all that much.
She chose to cover Houtini by Dua Lipa, which I’ve never heard before, but I liked her interpretation.
This is incredibly pleasant to listen to. She has one of the strongest voices I’ve heard this season and this is accompanied by a live backing band that elevates it right into one of my favourites. I know I said I’m not huge on blues, but this works for me - again, live music is surely elevating this. But I’m certainly putting this on my playlist.
They picked I See Fire by Ed Sheeran as their cover, except they rockified it. And, to be honest, it was really good. I’d genuinely listen to it again.
The song isn’t one of my favourites from this band. I’ve actually known this band before, so I was really happy to see them in the lineup. Unfortunately, this is one more case of a band slightly watering down their style to be more accessible. Not that it makes me absolutely dislike the song, but it tries to be fun a little too hard, but the live performance doesn’t feel fun. I’ll still listen to this song though.
The actual song was just ok though, nothing special. I liked his voice though, so there’s that. I could see this getting some jury love if it gets selected.
Sometimes, I just don’t click with performers. In this case, I didn’t enjoy their performance of Bang Bang (a cover of Nancy Sinatra’s song) or of their actual song. There’s something irritating voice about her voice and I can’t quite put my finger on it. All I know is that I barely find this tolerable, sadly. I’ll still give it some credit for having a decent melody though.
I actually decently enjoyed this. While her performance left a lot to be desired and the song isn’t very original either. But I just found it nice.
This was incredibly generic, and the performance brought it down even more. It’s the first song that was actively difficult for me to get through, and it made me glad that there’s a 3-minute limit on songs.
I really liked her performance, but the song was too formulaic and average to have any chance of being too high in my rankings. I suppose it all balances out to being above average anyway.
At first, I was very excited about Stefan Raab coming back to take charge of the German ESC selection. As time went on, I got less and less excited though. Oh, the contestants have to sing covers and get eliminated based on them. Oh, the semi-final is 100% jury-based. Oh, there was a last-second change of the juries only picking five songs for the superfinal. Overall, this felt as shady as some Polish NFs and left a very sour taste in my mouth. I don’t like conspiracy theories, but it felt like they picked the worst songs for the superfinal alongside Raab’s favourite so that it would win. I don’t even mind the fact that a song I dislike won - god knows that happens every week anyway. I hate the fact that it was so blatantly rigged.
The only upside is that at least a song in German won. I hope it doesn’t do too poorly, so SWR (not NDR, they won’t be in charge next year anyway) try to pick something in German again.