Eurovision Rants

Ballads

(This little song is basically Eurovision's first winner. Guess what, it's a ballad. So a little appreciation for Refrain?)

So, if we talked of the joke acts previously, let's go to their.... "enemies", as so called by some people.

If you're new to the Eurovision fandom and you started watching the previous years, you might notice the slower songs which try to convey all the emotion in order to make it powerful both vocally and performance-wise as well.

Well, these are our good old ballads. And of course, a lot of people seem to complain of the fact that "they end in the majority" and that they're snoozefests.

Sometimes it gets so bad, it ends up for some people wanting to ban this musical genre in Eurovision in the favor of the novelty acts.

Now hold up a second: Why?!

I get that sometimes ballads tend to get boring if the emotion isn't delivered well. But why the hell would you want to ban a musical genre which technically was around ESC since the Retro Eurovision times?

Don't get me wrong, I love myself some novelty acts if done well. Not every silly thing is good, and it can even get weird or annoying as hell. Ballads however are pretty deep and emotional, but it also matters the song's message and delivery.

Here's a kind example of a ballad done right and one done pretty wrong:

So, this is Iris, the Belgian act in Eurovision 2012. Her song, entitled "Would You?" is a sweet, calm ballad.... in a very strong year, unfortunately, she didn't qualify.

What went wrong?

Well, to begin with, 2012 was pretty much a strong year song-wise, but with one hell of an obvious winner, in my opinion.
In this case, Belgium was pretty disadvantaged from the very beginning with this kind of song, because you can't do much with it performance-wise (performance also matters a bit, especially when it comes to musical delivery).

Iris right there, mainly stood on the same spot and despite being sweet, it's way too stale and pretty boring.

And this is a wrong. See, this kind of songs/performances people will take the time to literally go to the toilet. If you can't charm people in some way while singing a ballad, then what are you even doing?

To go under a comparation, here's Portugal's winning entry.

And yes, yes ballads can still win Eurovision. And still in their native tongue.

So, before that, the last fully native-languaged song which won Eurovision was Molitva (Serbia 2007, honestly that song is a religious experience and I'd honestly recommend it for a listen).
Also Portugal was doing pretty badly, as their last final before this song was in 2010.

Salvador isn't that kind of performer which would make a massive performance in order to stand out. His mimics and soothing voice is what made the song feel very personal and magical, even if many Europeans couldn't understand what he's singing about.

He manages to convey the emotion in a very simple manner, and his movements are generally natural and pretty effective in the end, as if you didn't knew already, won the edition. And that's how you do a slow ballad right.

Conclusion: Ballads are great and overly underappreciated. If you manage to convey the emotion and perform it in the simple, yet effective mode without being stale and stiff, then you can deliver it.

P.S. There's also the Balkan Ballad line which were pretty successful in ESC for quite a while and apparently get a lot of appreciation from europals. I also tend to recommend those ones for a "how to do a great ballad and deliver it amazingly well", but I felt like I'm going pretty obvious so I'd rant them on a different day, separately.

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30 songs for Eurovision Song Contest 2018, woo!

I swear to gods my winner is changing too fast already, send help. But my top 3 pretty much remains solid.

~Kebab