Does Moldova's 2014 entry for the Eurovision Song Content match the fun and drama of their past few choices?
Moldova is always one of my favorite countries to root for in the Eurovision Song Contest. Their entries always seem to perfectly blend pop trends with local flavor, and generally have a sense of fun that other entries seem to lack. Pasha Parfeny's "Lautar" and Aliona Moon's "O Mie" have been some of my favorite songs in the competition for the past few years for just these reasons - does their choice this year, Cristina Scarlat's "Wild Soul", keep up the trend?
I'm disappointed with both the song and its performance this year. The song itself feels unfocused, seemingly switching styles ever 20 seconds and making it hard to figure out what's going on lyrically. Cristina's vocals don't help here - it could just be the performance here, but it feels like her voice is overexerting itself in some places while being wildly off-key in others. All in all, it feels like 20 partially good ideas at once, rather than one or two solid choices.
The performance is a similar mishmash of disparate elements that I can't quite piece together into a coherent whole. Cristina's wearing a pretty cool half-armor dress (the likely weight of which is making her static performance a necessity rather than a choice), but then there's some vaguely warrior-esque backup dancers, a sheet of shiny material, and RC-copters with fabric flying around for some reason? I just don't get what they're going for. I'm hoping Moldova finds a way to pare these down to a better narrative for the performance, because the current presentation is somehow both indescribable and completely forgettable.