Again, no time to watch the show, but checked out all the videos today and followed a bit on twitter during the event.
Booooo, Folkshilfe is out
Unfortunately our favorites, Folkshilfe, didn’t make it, but I am quite sure this push helped them to make a decent career and live just from music for the next year. And I have to say again, they would have fit best to our beloved country Austria in general to represent us at the #esc2015, just how they make music and what they do is 100% Austria(n music).
Just watch this one again:
Here is the official performance from the Final show (couldn’t find it on YouTube)
After watching their performance compared to the others,
it looks like they didn’t have enough backup sound. If you are listening to the EP and their Eurovision song “Be who you are” on it, you can clearly spot a decent bass (line) and of course a very good production which makes it sound massive and powerful. Live, I did miss that wall of sound. In my opinion, a bass player somewhere in the shadows next to the choir for support wouldn’t have hurt them (or a mixing engineer who mixes more bass into it) :)
But back to the other contestants. I didn’t quite get the voting mechanism, but I think first there was an international jury who picked DAWA and the Makemakes from our 6 contestants: Johann Sebastian Bass, Celina Ann, DAWA, Zoe, the Makemakes and Folkshilfe, and then the audience could vote who should win this thing from the last two standing.
The Makemakes and DAWA in the final
In my humble opinion there should be no additional video material showing the artists doing this and that and telling all kind of background stories, cause everything every single person sees about the artists is influencing their decision who to vote for. It should be just about the music, the song and the performance on stage who you pick.
That being said, I also totally understand that the entertainment industry has to deliver some kind of spectacle to keep it interesting for everybody. So if I would own a massive TV station I would do it differently, haha.
Anyway, the Makemakes were not quite my favorite ones, I think the song is too weak and a bit boring. But coming back to the sound aspect, they had a second piano, a guitar hidden somewhere, an extra tambourine guy in the choir, and an arrangement which was way “fuller” and more dense than the other songs. Who ever wrote the song, or more the arrangement, did a very good job there to pack it in the right sections. So this way it sounded just better (perceived also louder) than the other songs, which is the preferred weapon of choice to make an average song sound supergood.
I guess this is the main point why they won, plus from the visual standpoint they got good looks.
Let’s see how it will turn out with the international opinion, here at the Eurovision Song Contest Channel on YouTube you can already see a bit in which direction it is shifting (Date: 14th of March, 2015)
BUT if I just look at the song, in my opinion DAWA should have won. Their song is more tricky and got more tiny interesting things going on, and also seemed more “real” to me. Plus it got super earworm quality, just listen two it 2 times in a row and you remember a lot of sections. Do that with the Makemakes and see how much you remember, haha. Unfortunately the arrangement was also a bit weaker (lack of bass) than the one of the Makemakes. Add a hidden bass player to the Chello and a choir with some “uuhhhh uhhhhs” at the right sections and DAWA would have blown the Makemakes out of the studio ;) I guess I should become ORF Eurovision Song Contest coach, muuuuaahhahaha.
Here is the official performance from the Final show and below from a show before (already on YouTube)
So we will be looking forward to see all the other contestants from all over the world and let’s see how far the Makemakes can take us :)