Eurovision 2025 song (p)reviews: part 2/7 (Luxembourg, Greece, Slovenia, Belgium, Spain)

Another batch of countries have decided who and what they are sending to Basel in May 2025! Since I did my last reviews, we've sadly lost one of the more interesting Eurovision countries, as Moldova has dropped out of the contest, meaning we are back down to 37 countries in total. So without further delay, here's my next batch of reviews covering 5 more countries (scoring system explained below*):

Luxembourg: Laura Thorn - "La Poupée Monte Le Son"

I can't feign a massive dislike over this song: it's not offensively awful: it does try to harness a little nostalgia by using orchestral instruments, and harking back to Luxembourg's previous 1965 winning entry with its title and subject matter. However, I can't award it a single star because the chorus is just so annoying to my ears. The meaningless "na na na"s are obvious, too often repeated and feel trivially tied to the chord sequence (Dm - B♭ - C - A7) which again is repeated to the point of annoyance with no particular subtlety or variety.

This is a shame, as I can kind of see what Luxembourg are aiming for here. But I've only listened to it 4 times and already I'm not looking forward to the 5th. I suppose that's just musical taste, so no judgement from me if you happen to like this. It's just it really doesn't agree with me and I don't even think the non-annoying parts of it compensate much.

Laura Thorn at Luxembourg's national final

I'll be interested though, in a technical sense, so see how Laura Thorn delivers this song live in Basel - the footage I've seen has quite a few pitching errors in, mostly on the flat side, and I wonder what room for improvement there is vocally if she keeps the moderately taxing choreography. Let's wait and see...

Greece: Klavdia - "Αστερομάτα" ("Asteromata") ★★

After Greece's internal selection of Marina Satti in 2024 and her excellent folktronica entry, I was always going to be skeptical that Greece's new national final would deliver a song of similar standard. Thankfully my pessimism wasn't totally justified, but I remain just a little sad that this isn't as original as Marina's song from a year ago.

There are plenty of positives here though: the soulful vocal tricks you into thinking this is a pure ballad at first, and actually the build up is achieved so gradually that for the the first half you'd arguably be correct. Klavdia opens with a few seconds of a cappella singing, which is very subtly joined by dreamy synth sounds. Until the 50s mark the tempo and meter isn't obvious, but even when the more rhythmic synth parts starts, it's still not clear what the style is going to evolve into. There's a build up of volume and intensity and at 1min20s it feels like a beat "should" drop but instead the song draws back for 4 bars of floaty, beatless instrumental. Finally, at the half-way point the beat kicks in properly and we have the same epic-but-melancholy harmony supporting a soaring vocal line, all being carried along by latin-esque percussion. There's a little bit of variety in the rhythmic patterns, before we end with another short a cappella vocal to finish. Pretty solid work, I'd say, and well produced with enough variety in this recorded version to merit hearing multiple times. Doesn't quite get 3 stars from me though, as I don't think this song is really bringing anything unique here that makes me keen to dive any deeper into Klavdia's back catalogue (plus the couple of other tunes of hers I've listened to seem very similar indeed, and if anything, less inspired).

Slovenia: Klemen - "How Much Time Do We Have Left?"

This is a tough one to review, as it's so personal to Klemen Slakonja, who sings this ballad that he's co-written. From what little I can gather from the internet, the lyrics are about his wife's terminal illness ("You read a diagnosis / It said that you'd be dying soon"). Positives first: the lyrics, in English, are sincere and meaningful, if not actually poetic. Klemen's vocal delivery in the national final was respectable too (even when suspended upside down!).

However I dislike basically everything about the composition of the song. The harmony is predictable, realised initially via the well-worn trope of "sad lonely piano chords", and later with the entirely unsurprising and uninspiring addition of orchestral strings, acoustic guitar and a formless wash of backing vocals. There is close to zero rhythmic interest, and the melody is barely any better, not least because of the lack of harmonic and rhythmic material to interact with or provide contrast. Fair play to Klemen for winning the chance to represent Slovenia in Basel, and for baring his soul on stage with such a personal song (I speak with decades of singing experience when I say it's a really tough job to deliver a good performance when you are overcome with emotion). But this composition is offensively dull, and if it crashes out in Semi-Final 1, as I expect, that will be a deserved result.

Belgium: Red Sebastian - "Strobe Lights" ★★

Red Sebastian: a stage name that will never *not* make me think of Li'l Sebastian from Parks & Recreation

An unsubtle but well-produced bit of pounding techno-house, this would probably have got a single star from me based on the first minute or so. Once the vocal line leaps up an octave, though, eventually climaxing on a G5 (well above the normal range of a male voice, even in falsetto) this became a song I'd want to listen to again. Neither the harmony nor melody are winning any prizes for originality, but both aspects are functional, complementing the pounding kick-drum-on-every-beat groove that's a staple of this type of EDM. Red Sebastian gets a good chance here to show off his voice, and judging from the national final performance, he's perfectly capable of hitting those very highest notes more or less accurately when performing live.

Spain: Melody - "Esa Diva" ★

Though I'm not a dedicated follower of Eurovision national final season (if I were, it would be almost a full-time job to listen to everything), I had read several opinions online saying that Spain's competition, Benidorm Fest, was overall sounding quite mediocre. I think that opinion is borne out with this selection, a dance-pop number which relies on a pretty-standard-by-now female empowerment message ("Ya verán, esa diva soy yo" / "you'll [all] see... that diva is me") plus plenty of on-stage enthusiasm. It didn't annoy me enough to want to turn it off, but neither did it make my 2025 Eurovision Favourites playlist, as I have no desire to hear it again. That is at least partly because of the very superficial addition of flamenco guitar and castanets at a few points, which sounds incongruous and honestly makes me feel a little embarrassed for Spain. Imagine if Scotland, for instance, was entering Eurovision on its own and submitted a song that started with a quick blast of bagpipes, maybe a quick folk-y flourish on a fiddle and a Scot shouting "och aye!" before proceeding to a largely predictable pop song. That hypothetical song would embarrass plenty of Scots and I think Melody's song is in similarly questionable taste.

It can't be denied though that there was plenty of enthusiasm on stage during Melody's vocal performance in the Benidorm Fest final, and everyone (audience and voting public included) seemed to be having fun. The vocal line did have some less controlled moments where Melody's tone lost focus though, and I'm not particularly hopeful this will improve ahead of Basel. As a Big 5 country, Spain get a bye to the Grand Final, and for me this is one of those entries that could be used as evidence to argue against the Big 5 system.

7 down, 30 more to go...

We're into Eurovision selection season proper now, and I've now covered 18.9% of the entrants. My reviews are going to start coming out in more predictable batches now: by next week (Sun 9 Feb) we should know who's representing Ireland, Ukraine, Finland, Latvia, and Malta, so I'll try and review those five in one batch. I'm particularly interested in how Finland's competition goes: the obvious "chaos party animal" candidate (a metal-EDM fusion number called "Puppy" by One Morning Left) was disqualified owing to allegations of sexual misconduct that led very quickly to the non-accused band members dissolving the group entirely. The bookie's favourite is currently Erika Vikman's "Ich Komme", which I think would represent Finland fantastically.

By the week after that (Sun 16 Feb) we'll know who and what Poland, Estonia, Norway, Lithuania, and Italy are sending, and hopefully we'll also have a few announcements from those countries not holding a national final (i.e. those who've directly selected their entries).

Right, enough for now, more reviews in a week or so!

* Scoring system recap:

Remember that at this point my overall my goal is to review the songs themselves in their studio versions. I'm using the same starring system I used from 2023 and 2024, namely:

no stars = if I had control of the playlist I would turn it off or skip

★ wouldn't skip if it came up on shuffle

★★ on my "2025 Eurovision Favourites" playlist on Spotify

★★★ spent my own money getting a digital download; gone digging around their back catalogue for more stuff

★★★★ bought their entire back catalogue; checking out tour dates