Can Greta Salome get Iceland back into the Eurovision Grand Final with "Hear Them Calling"?
Country: Iceland
Song Title: "Hear Them Calling"
Artist: Greta Salome
First Semi-Final: Position #16
Last year's entry: "Unbroken" - Maria Olafs (DNQ - 15th Place, SF2)
The first semi-final of this year's Eurovision Song Contest is packed with some early favorites (like Russia and Estonia), but there's still plenty of room for other entries to make it through to the final. Does Greta Salome's "Hear Them Calling" have what it takes to make it through?
Iceland hasn't really done anything with this song since it won the national final, and I think that's a good thing. There's a unique drama to the instrumentation of the song that stands out from the rest of the pack, which can only be a good thing. Greta's live vocals are a little weaker than the studio version, but in fairness, she's doing a lot of choreography on stage at the same time. If I had one thing I'd change about the song itself, I'd make it a hybrid English/Icelandic version (like Pollaponk did with their entry a few years ago) since the English lyrics are a little...dopey, to put it nicely.
That said, this is one case where I'm actively hoping for a completely different stage presentation than what we've already seen. Greta's black fringe-y number is pretty awesome, but the whole "interact with background graphics" feels like a rip-off of the previous winner, especially because Greta's not quite nailing her marks every time. There's got to be a way to give the same drama on stage in Stockholm without needing perfectly nailed positioning.