The 3rd and final heat of A Dal 2019 was held on the evening of Saturday 2 February. Once again it was 10 acts with 6 going through to join the 12 qualifiers from the previous 2 heats into the semi finals. This heat had some A Dal heavy hitters with past participants Leander Kills and Hungary’s 2017 8th placegetter, Joci Pápai.
Firstly, Freddie and Dallos were looking lovely, although they were more dressed for a day at the races rather than for crushing people’s Eurovision dreams. Now on with the show…..
The audience is definitely into it and Leander Kills’ folksy, rock song has been one of the pre-competition favourites. It’s a builder but to me it feels like you are being yelled at for the last 30 seconds. They’ve had better songs. Score: 7-7-7-8-9=38 (did not qualify)
Petruska - "Help Me Out Of Here”
Another one who has been in A Dal before. Bright, colourful staging to match the saccharine song. Preferred the studio version to the live but the jury certainly came to the party and helped Petruska out of the heat (see what I did there). Score: 8-8-9-8-7=40 (equal 3rd qualifier)
Monyo Project - "Run Baby Run"
A sultry little number that is very economical with words. That top note is quite something to the ears and to be honest it ends in a meandering stroll rather than a run. Both the jury and the public took their advice and ran! Score: 7-7-7-7-7=35 (did not qualify)
Bogi is cute as a button and for just 16 shows some of these “seasoned” performers how to do it. Not much power in her voice and some very literal staging as her sweet song entitled “Tomorrow” is about growing up, so the platform she’s sitting on rises up high during the end of the song. Aw. Score: 8-9-8-8-8=41 (equal 1st qualifier)
A harder rock song giving a nod to last year’s winner, AWS. At least they’ve got more melody than AWS but there’s a bit too much talk singing for my liking. Staging would be lovely on a cold wintery night. Overall it comes across as a little bland and did not get any love from the jury. Score: 7-8-6-7-8=36 (did not qualify)
Oh my, this was dreadful. Some very flat singing throughout and a soul song without any soul. Look out for some spectacular dancing from the trombone player. The jurors giving this 9 were a disgrace, we see what you are doing! Score: 7-8-9-9–7=40 (equal 3rd qualifier)
Joci has a song about his dad and it’s quite heartfelt going by the amount of tears he shed during the introduction piece. It definitely has a nod to his 2017 entry but without the rap or the milk jug. Not a solid performance tonight, a wavering voice in the lower register and staging that pretty much just involved standing around and singing. Score: 8-9-8-8–8=41 (equal 1st qualifier)
Some “you want me, no you don’t want me” interpretive dancing between Kyra and a good looking Hungarian gentleman couldn’t save this one. Score: 5-6-6-5-6=28 (did not qualify)
These two guys are twitter fans obviously, with reference to hashtags in their urban rap. Having googled the lyrics I worked out the song is actually a commentary about social media. But they aren’t quite as Eminem as they want to be and there’s no retweet from me or the jury. A strong vote of 9 from the viewers who were obviously busy on their Instagram rather than listening to the actual song. Score: 6-6-7-7-9=35 (second chance qualifier)
Well at least they used the stage well as visually it looked pretty good. But this soft pop/rock song takes a very long 3 minutes to go nowhere. Score: 8-8-8-7-8=39 (5th qualifier)
In summary, there weren’t any real standout performances and Leander got killed! Also, there was a nice nod to Australia and Jess Mauboy with We Got Love playing out over the final credits (where were our bloody televotes Hungary!).
It’s now over to Chris to for the first semi final.