Semi 1 - Montenegro

Semi 1 - 01

Montenegro

Zauvijek volim te
Stefan Filipović

Ade:
Thoroughly unremarkable bit of bland sub Yank power-pop that manages to
be both twee and repulsive at the same time. Truly horrible. 0/10

Alexander-NL:
Not what one would call the most spectacular opening of a contest. My first impression of this was awful, with that video miming without a microphone. They would have looked more professional mouthing into water bottles. Went straight to my bottom. The bottom of my list, I mean. But I must say I have to partly come back to it. The new version is certainly OK, and overall it’s not a bad melody. If he performs it well, who knows, they will still fail miserably!

Boog:
An amateur-looking performance at their national final masks a respectable song, that doesn’t deserve its ‘favouritism to be last’ status. When you hear the song, you imagine an ageing rock band who’ve sold millions of records in the Balkans in the eighties, so the lad’s image ( and his backing singers’ ) is a bit incongruous. (incongruity can work of course, ( in fact I’m a proponent of it) but I doubt it in this case) Bizarrely it shares the Native American drumbeat of the Ukrainian entry, but more of that later. Of course first song on and it will receive a huge welcome. One final point; Montenegro has a very beautiful coastline!
Personal score out of ten (5) and Winnschans (0%)

Harrow:
What is the point of entering? Apart from the douze for Serbia, of course... 2/10

Lobo:
Haven´t listened to it.

Sergio:
So, this is Montenegro's 2nd ever entry and not a great one, I'm afraid. In fact it has similarities with last year's Montenegrin entry, although this one is slightly better. Stefan sings well (despite his very deep voice for someone as young as he is) but this will be a rather uninteresting opener of the 1st semifinal. The song is very late 80's in style, in my opinion. I don't expect it to qualify but points from Bosnia and Slovenia are more or less certain (since the other ex-Yugo countries aren't voting in the same semi). Since there are worse songs than this, I'll give it a 4 out of 10.

Shi:
At first hearing: When the song ended, I remembered that I thought it sounded nice. Unfortunately, I couldn't remember the actual song. At second hearing: I really like it. It's cute and harmless and good-moody, and it has some nice moments of melody, even if it has been written two decades too late, give or take a year. The problem is that while I enjoy the song a lot while listening to it, I still can't hum a single bit of it, and probably wouldn't be able to even if my life depended on it.
Why it should qualify: He's (kind of) cute, he (relatively) can sing live, and as far as we know he has no plans to share the stage with any kind of birds.
Why it shouldn't: Because it's the song that wasn't there.
Wise words: "I'm just wasting time" - It might be three minutes of your life you'll never get back, but that's fine, you won't remember it anyway.
Bottom line: I forgot.
Score: 7/10

Stefan:
If the Montenegrin delegation's teambus took a wrong turn on the way from Podgorica to Belgrade and never arrived, this 80s Jugovizija reject wouldn't be missed. A certain non-qualifier if there ever was one. A generous 3/10.

Tore:
In my book the absolute worst entry in 2007 was Montenegro. I was at therefore hoping for something much better this time around, especially as they had some time to find an entry after selecting the artist. Well they found a better song than the 2007-trash, I’ll give them that, but this is yet again so uninspiring and dull it will be the one certain ex-Yugoslavian country we won’t see in the final. And what a terrible opener of ESC 2008. Chances of qualifying: 10%


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