"Hungary's Eurovision selection process A Dal 2017 began Saturday with 10 songs competing. Which six songs advanced to the semi-finals?<!--more-->
Hungary has had an impressive run at Eurovision in recent years, qualifying for the final every year since returning in 2011. Part of this success could be attributed to the country's selection process called A Dal, which has been used since 2012.
A Dal 2017 began this past Saturday with the first set of 10 songs out of thirty performing for judges and the Hungarian public. After each performance, the panel of four judges offers critiques and each judge gives a score of one to 10 points. The judges are Both Miklos, Zseda, Frenreisz Karoly, and Caramel.
The home audience also gets to rate the performance via the A Dal app and SMS, adding another one to 10 points to the final score. The five acts with the most points automatically move on to the semi-finals. Another round of app/SMS voting opens for the other five acts, with the winner of that vote added to the semi-finals as a wildcard.
Here are the six acts that advanced following this week's show.
1st Place (Tie) - Leander Kills "Élet" ("Life") - 40 points
Although this song didn't really grab me during Saturday's show, the performance was straightforward. It may have benefited from going second in the running order, as it didn't have a chance to be forgotten among other entries. I'll be curious to see how this does in the semi-finals.
1st Place (Tie) - Roma Soul "Nyitva a ház" ("Open House") - 40 points
This song closed out the show with a solid performance. My concern about this track is that a lot of the performance centered on the acoustic instrumentation, which won't work on the Eurovision stage. I have a feeling this will slide on through to the A Dal final.
3rd Place (Tie) - Viki Singh "Rain" - 39 points
I am shocked at how well received this song was given how cliched and insipid the lyrics are. The stage performance was fine for a power ballad, but if this were to go all the way to Kyiv it would need a major rewrite. However, even if this had a more appropriate score (34 or 35 points), it probably would have still advanced to the semi-final.
3rd Place (Tie) - Spoon 21 "Deák" - 39 points
This was the most visually interesting performance of A Dal heat one and matched a lot of the imagery in the above video. The immediate concern is that the stage performance had eight people, so that will need to be tweaked were it to advance. We'll see if it gets past the semi-finals first.
5th Place - Dávid Henderson "White Shadows" - 37 points
This song definitely benefited from going first in the lineup. Though not as lyrically insipid as "Rain", it was called out for being too repetitive with "White Shadows."((I don't speak Hungarian, but Karoly knows what's up.))
Wildcard - Benji "Karcok" ("Scratches") - 36 points
Benji has a good voice, but this song doesn't really do anything with it. The song doesn't go anywhere and stops abruptly, which doesn't allow for it to stand out. Still, I think it was one of the better songs in the field and I'm glad it nabbed the wildcard spot."