Last year Georgia almost "oximated" its way to a top-ten finish. In 2016, can they sex, drug, and rock-n-roll back to the Grand Final?
Country: Georgia
Song Title: "Midnight Gold"
Artist: Nika Kocharov and Young Georgian Lolitaz
Second Semi-Final: Position #17
Last year's entry: "Warrior" - Nina Sublatti (11th Place)
Georgia's had a rough few years at the contest, led by a couple of inexplicably bad entries, even by Eurovision standards, in 2012 and 2014. Two years later and I still can't explain what's happening in the 2014 entry, except to echo Mike's description of it as a "college dorm jam session" and explain that yes, it did end up in dead-last place. Can they snap the even-year losing streak and return to the Grand Final stage?
In the past few weeks, Georgia has made a single change to this song: cutting about 15 seconds to get under the three-minute time limit. As I predicted, they nixed the guitar distortion solo (conveniently clocked at about 15 seconds), leaving the rest of the song intact and unchanged. For me, that's great. I enjoy the rock/alt-rock sound, including the guitar distortion, which we don't often see at Eurovision. I'm also relieved that their live performance is more compelling than the weird kid-toys official version embedded above. It's a song about sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll. What's not to like? Seriously though, "Midnight Gold" is the most-disagreed upon song here at telESCope. In our initial round of rankings, one person had it near the top, while another had it at the very bottom of this semifinal.((The third writer had it near the midpoint, because that's apparently how we roll.))
I have a feeling Eurovision voters will have a similarly split reaction -- either they'll love it, or they'll hate it, with not much in between. On the one hand, Russia's presence in the other semifinal means the former Soviet Socialist Republic countries in this round will be looking for someone to give their votes, and it probably won't be the Ukraine. On the other hand, Georgia's only got two reliable friends voting in this semifinal, and anything that causes further division only makes it worse. The bookmakers seem to agree, with Georgia facing the toughest odds of the contest at 300:1 to win. For context, that level of certain failure is matched only by San Marino, who hilariously (and probably correctly) decided that a disco track would make their entry better. I like "Midnight Gold" and will be pleased if Georgia can make it through, but realistically expect they'll end up somewhere in the teens of the second semifinal, failing to qualify by at least a couple of spots.