Welcome to the second edition of the Luxembourg Song Contest. It seems like it’s here to stay, even if some things about it are somewhat iffy (please stop replacing your artists’ songs with Melfest rejects, it sucks). Last year, it had exceptional production values, so let’s see if it holds up this time.
Before we begin, we, of course, have an opening act. Last year, they had a long reprise of old Luxembourgish entries (with an emphasis on the winner - except for the forgotten 1983 winner). This time, all contestants are singing Fighter, which was Luxembourg’s entry in 2024. After this, we get a lot of talking from the hosts, mostly in Luxembourgish (which I don’t speak). We don’t go to the songs just yet though. Instead, we get a performance by the real winner of Eurovision 2014 - Conchita Wurst - singing the winning song of Eurovision 2014 Rise Like a Phoenix. And damn, this is just as good in 2024 as it was in 2014 - a truly timeless song and performance. After this, we finally go to the songs, so let’s see what Luxembourg has cooked up. I have my pre-show favourites based on the studio versions, so I hope they won’t flop live.
It’s a fairly typical choice for an opener—a generic uptempo song sung by a woman. As you might’ve guessed, this has a Swedish songwriter, and there’s basically nothing special about it. It would probably qualify in ESC, but it would probably place just outside of the bottom 5 because it’s just a Eurovision cliché overload. Cyprus could send this, and it would easily fit with their recent direction. Verdict: not for me at all, but not actively bad.
Edit after the recap: yeah, this is a shameless rip-off of Replay from 2019. I can literally sing parts of it over the song. Is this just a year of shameless rip-offs of unlikeable girlbops (expect some huge slander of an annoying SloMo rip-off in Belgian Eurosong this year).
There are instruments on stage, and they’re all mic’d up, which means they’re playing live. If RTL can do this, the EBU has no excuse not to do the same thing. It’s genuinely such a great song: it’s nothing like the generic pop slop we often see. It’s very, for lack of a better word, “grown-up”. It’s very introspective but also very bombastic. And goddamn, the vocals are out of this world - they’re better than in the studio version. The staging is also basically perfect - it doesn’t go over the top, but it does catch your eye. It would be a shame if this didn’t win - I had a different favourite coming to this selection, but the live performance of this song totally won me over (although my former favourite can still win me over again).
Yeah, ok, RTL really isn’t messing around with it. I don’t even want to imagine how difficult this live delay effect was to pull off without looking awful (it looks like when you stream your desktop and open the stream). The staging for this is genuinely so good - it would be incredible to see this on the big stage. I also kinda like the gritty and maybe even messy instrumental, it ended up working much better live. But his live performance left a lot to be desired: the vocals were a bit all over the place, although there’s nothing vocal coaching can’t fix. It just sounds like he struggles with dancing and singing at the same time, although not too badly. Overall, this got elevated live.
Wow, this is utter cringe. Lyrically, it’s just some inane word salad someone cobbled from a rhyming dictionary. There’s just nothing I enjoy here: the instrumental is boring, the lyrics are cringe, the performance is dull, and the singing is dreary. The high note he did will haunt me until the end of my life.
At least we have Marie Myriam singing L’Oiseau et L’Enfant as a palate cleanser. Ok, she was miming it to the ballady Spotify version and not the more upbeat ESC version, but it was still really good.
The song is so boring, it’s a shame this performance was wasted on it. She’s very emotional, which makes me enjoy the overall thing, but the song is blander than the pasta you boiled without salt by mistake. Basically, I like her, but I don’t like the song. Again, RTL, please stop getting Melfest rejects for some competent singers.
It’s a classic example of a strong verses/mediocre chorus song, but they definitely have a good vision of how they want it to look, and she definitely gives it her all. And while she sounds a bit breathy at times, she hit the high/long notes, so it’s just a matter of some vocal coaching (which Tali also got) to prepare her for the big stage. Also, they’d need to modify the staging a bit for the big ESC stage, but this is easily the most complete package in the show.
I love how they can miss each note in a completely different way each time. It makes this terrible cliché song sound like something that should be prohibited by the Geneva Convention. I actively hated listening to each second of this idiotic country ditty, and I’m happy this is over, but I’m unhappy that it exists as a song.
Well, this was a huge mixed bag. There are some good songs, some decent songs and a couple of really bad stinkers. There was a lot of talking after the songs were performed, and then we got a weird trap remix of Poupeé de Ciré, Poupeé de Son performed by children (ew). After a lot more talking, Tali showed up with a song that’s much better than Fighter, even if it was a bit sappy, but I liked the way she performed it. It was a lot more lowkey, which, as you all know, is something I prefer. There was a lot more talking, which I kinda tuned out (sorry, a national final with seven songs can’t justify being longer than 1.5 hours, and I’ve had to sit through over 2 hours of this already). And here’s Conchita performing a song that isn’t as good as Rise Like a Phoenix, yayyyyyyy. Ok, to be fair, this was still one of the best songs of the night.
Results time (the juries for now). Holy hell, Laura Thorn is running away: she got 94/96 available jury points. Only Estonia didn’t give her 12. Oh, for fuck’s sake, an ad break. Now we’re on the televote, and OH WOW THE HORRIBLE COUNTRY SONG GOT 110 POINTS FROM THE TELEVOTE, this is horrible. Apparently, they were by far the biggest name in the selection, and the song was a big radio hit in Luxembourg, which explains it. Then we got a string of very poor results with sub-40 results until we were left with a two-horse race with Laura and Zero Point Five. Luckily, Laura got 90 points from the televote, which was more than enough to overtake Ride. I’m decently happy with the outcome for sure.