"Is Tijana Bogićević's "In Too Deep" for Serbia at the Eurovision Song Contest?
Serbia's history as a solo nation in the Eurovision Song Contest starts off with a bang - they won the 2007 contest and hosted in 2008 - but sort of drops off from there. They placed 3rd in 2012, but since then, it's been a bit hit or miss. They've qualified through to the final in both 2015 and 2016 (with what I thought was a great song, "Shelter"), but only just barely, with the final results putting them well out of contention to win again. Is Tijana Bogićević's "In Too Deep" the song to push them over the edge, or are they literally just in too deep?
I like the way this song manages to knit together a lot of 2017 music trends -- a little bit of a tropical house beat, vocal sampling, strings -- but it's not done in a way that feels fresh and new to me. The vocal performance is good (at least in the video - as always, I'd love to compare that to a live performance of the song before the actual event), but lyrically, the song doesn't feel particularly "sticky" to me. There's always something that jumps out to me about the songs that place near the top at Eurovision, and this just lacks that spark for me.
Another thing I like, though, is the video for this. I hope whatever creative team is working on the live performance is able to pull some of the visuals from this clip to recreate on stage - they give life and visual interest to what could otherwise be a by-the-numbers mid-tempo song at this year's contest."