Eurovision 2025 song (p)reviews: part 3/7 (Ireland, Ukraine, Finland, Latvia, Malta, Czechia)
Last weekend, 5 more countries held national finals to decide who and what they are sending
to Eurovision 2025, with 1 further country having premiered the song for their internally-selected artist. So here's my next batch of reviews! (scoring system explained below*):
Ireland: Emmy - "Laika Party" ★
I appreciate a song text which is about a specific theme, avoiding the classic Eurovision "Love, Love, Peace, Peace" lyrical nonsense (thanks again, Malmö 2016!). Bonus points too if the act can manage to avoid similarly clichéd sentiments in the "I'm strong" / I'm brave" / "I'm gonna do it my way" vein. Ireland have certainly avoided all those clichés in 2025, by choosing a song about Soviet space dog, Laika, who in 1957 became the first earthling to orbit her planet. Instead of a hyperthermic death after orbiting Earth 4 times, Emmy's song imagines Laika is still alive and partying in space - on the one hand, oddball and perfectly Eurovision-coded, but on the other hand... actually a bit grim when you think about it.
The composition is unambiguously in the eurodance style: kick drum on every beat, offbeat 8th notes in the bass line, and piercing synth sounds in the treble range during the chorus. Those treble-y synths sound fine when they first arrive as a complement to a flowing melody ("Laika party in the sky...") but get boring very quickly once the text degenerates into "bam bam, bara ram bam bam bam bam bam...", sung in unison with the exact same synth line we just heard. My favourite part of this song is the surprisingly tasteful key change at the 2min36s mark, taking us up a tone and a half from D minor up to F minor. The C major chord at the end of the original chord progression acts as a dominant chord leading us neatly into the key of F minor. This happens in support of a slightly modified chorus melody, which finally shifts up to where it "should" be to match the new key and provide Emmy a chance to belt out a couple of higher notes to finish. If I were to re-arrange this song, I'd use that modulation in every chorus, maybe even without modulating back, making a kind of circle of minor 3rds.
Overall it's lacking heft in the bass, which to my ears is a big failing for any EDM track and prevents me wanting to listen to it much again. Nevertheless, fair play to Emmy, this is a fun execution of a very odd idea, and I think Eurovision 2025 will be all the better for it (plus it was very competently sung live, too).
Ukraine: Ziferblat - "Bird Of Pray" ★★★
If I'd had to imagine what kind of band Ziferblat is without any prior knowledge, this song would have made me guess a 70s prog rock band going for a radio-friendly single, but thankfully being unable to resist chucking in a little bit of everything they want anyway. There's a guitar solo, lush chords in the chorus, vocal harmony, a female voice floating high above the rest of the music, a dramatic moment of silence right at the climax of the piece, and even some mild rhythmic ambiguity. It's definitely in 12/8 but some passages feel more like they're in half-time, and others have a dual nature where you could easily "feel" the same bar as either 4 beats, each with 3 quavers, or 2 beats, each containing 3 crotchets.
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| Ziferblat: listen to the flower people! |
The overall mood is an odd mixture of dreamy, melancholy, energetic and epic. Ziferblat have pushed lots of my musical buttons with this song, and I'm very glad they get to represent Ukraine this year, and inject a little bit of variety to the contest while they're at it. I have just one request in an ideal world: can we get a prog metal cover of this from Voyager? It's absolutely unnecessary, as Ziferblat's version is really polished, but I'd love to hear this with a bit of distortion on the guitars and an epic keytar solo 😁.
[UPDATE: I am ashamed to admit that I must have listened to this dozens of times before I realised it contains one of the most beautiful key changes I've ever heard, composed and performed so artfully that I only noticed it when I came to transcribe it for this Overthing Eurovision segment. On paper it sounds like the most well-worn and tiresome trope of Eurovision and music in general, namely: modulate abruptly up a semitone just before the final chorus. Yet Ziferblat have disguised this perfectly amongst the already-complex harmony by transitioning out of a loud, harmonically sparse breakdown section into the quiet, ethereal start of the final chorus in the new key. Masterful.]
Finland: Erika Vikman - "Ich Komme" ★★
Well there's certainly plenty of buzz around this song because of its directly sexual theme and the fact that Erika Vikman is mounting a Eurovision comeback, having narrowly missed out on being selected to represent Finland in 2020. Thankfully that buzz is backed up by a pretty effective composition. The orchestration and overall pop style is hardly ground-breaking, but the writers have nevertheless avoided any dead spots where we might get bored. The first 8 bars of the second verse are a total contrast to the first verse, keeping the listener guessing as to what might happen in a 3rd verse or a bridge section. Then instead of either of those we get an extended coda, where the tempo accelerates and the volume mounts in unsubtle mimicry of a sexual climax, finally being cut off at the strict Eurovision 3 minute time limit without any obvious musical closure. Along the way we have a deep yet playful voice exclaiming "Wunderbar!", some camp-sounding synth interjections between Erika's vocal phrases, and for me the most striking feature, an unexpectedly major key chorus which includes a prominent minor third in the bass line accompanying it, creating an almost blues-y harmonic feel underneath the shiny pop production. Above all this, Erika's voice soars heroically. This song is no masterpiece, but it's fun, I like it, and I see why so many commentators think it could win the whole thing in May.
Malta: Miriana Conte - "Kant" ★
This gets a single star from me, partly because the groove in the chorus is catchy, but mostly for the ridiculous trans-lingual pun in the chorus. The phrase in question is "serving kant" where "kant" apparently means "singing" in Maltese, a fact that the official Eurovision YouTube channel was at great pains to point out after posting the video from the Maltese national final 🤔.
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| Glad we got that sorted, EBU 👍 |
While appreciating the attitude and the wordplay, I don't think the verses offer anything very interesting, and I'm not really convinced Miriana has the technical vocal ability to really (ahem) serve this properly. Also, lyrically it's fundamentally an "I'm sassy / strong / unique / I don't care what people think" kind of song which, once you've got past the naughty pun, is actually quite boring. I'm looking forward to next year when surely Sweden will send a multilingual song called "Slut!" to compete with Germany's "Dick". 😬
Czechia: Adonxs - "Kiss Kiss Goodbye"
Speaking of Malta, Czechia made the unexpected decision to premiere their internally-selected entry as part of the MESC show. It was billed as an "acoustic version" but the playback track was pretty full-on in both volume and orchestration, so I figured I'd give it a quick review here. To cut to the chase: this is another uninspired pop ballad with no standout features that would make anyone vote for it, be they jurors or televoters. The main features I remember about this are its extra dull chord progression and the over-produced and cheap-sounding orchestration of the intended climax of the song. I don't even get the impression that Adonxs is a super-impressive vocalist either, so I foresee this flopping in the Semi-Finals.
Latvia: Tautumeitas - "Bur Man Laimi" ★★★
The first thing that strikes me about this song is that, vocally, it's a team effort - literally only 12 seconds of this song contains a solo voice. The rest of it is all about 6 female voices working together, whether that be in unison or harmony. The composition includes so much that I like, too: homophonic vocal harmony in a folk style, high soaring female voices, electronic sounds accompanying, energetic percussion with plenty of rhythmic variety and, like Ziferblat's song, a couple of moments where you can "feel" the rhythm in 4 beats to a bar or just 2 depending on how you're, well, feeling. My favourite moment of this song is at the 2min20s mark where the accompaniment heard towards the beginning of the song returns, this time with a little more volume in the bass and a much fuller, more radiant sound in the synth harmonies above. An absolutely blissful moment which earned this composition a 3rd start from me. I really hope that Tautumeitas don't try and overcomplicate their show in Basel, and keep the focus on their 6 strong voices together like they did in the Latvian national final performance. As something of a choir nerd, I know how groups of voices singing together can really impress and inspire, and I have high hopes Tautumeitas will bring a little of that inspiration to Basel.
13 down, 24 more to go...
So this weekend things get more interesting for me personally with Poland, Estonia, Norway, Lithuania, and Italy making their selections:
- I'll be looking out to see if Tommy Cash's catchy mangling of both Italian and English languages gets to represent Estonia.
- I'll be interested to see if rock band Katarsis gets to be Lithuania's selection. If chosen, it would provide some welcome genre variety to the contest.
- The first of 2 songs from Poland that I'd be happy to see go to Basel is a slightly folky but mainly dark and seething EDM track from Sw@da x Niczos.
- Poland also has an epic bit of dance pop with extremely credible EDM production from Justyna Steczkowska, who it turns out has already represented Poland in Eurovision 1995.
More reviews soon!
* 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
