Eurovision 2025 song (p)reviews: part 5/7 (Germany, Australia, Netherlands, Serbia, Denmark, Croatia, Portugal)
We recently reached a big milestone of the Eurovision calendar: as of last week, we now know who and what all 37 countries are sending to Basel! I still have 16 songs left to review, so here's the next batch of ESC contenders: 5 winners of national final competitions and 2 announcements of internal selections. Let's see how they fare when subjected to my patchy musical analysis and peculiar music taste!
(scoring system re-capped below*):
Germany: Abor & Tynna - "Baller" ★★
Nice work Germany, for choosing this German-language house track which balances dance club energy with relaxed coolness. Abor & Tynna have managed to achieve something difficult which many other Eurovision acts have failed to do: they've managed to make a credible EDM tune that sounds satisfying despite being limited to 3 minutes. This seems to be difficult because dance music in general, and the electronic variety in particular, needs to sustain a groove, a vibe, and let people match that auditory feel with the feel of the movement of their own bodies. Mess around too much with the tempo, or break up the rhythm too much, and the spell is broken. The trick seems to be to create a deep groove and keep the musicological faffing to a minimum while still providing enough stimulus in the orchestration so listeners aren't bored.
The Spotify version of "Baller" on my playlist is structurally super-simple: chorus, verse, chorus, verse, chorus. Each chorus is doubled, so we get the most distinctive aspect of this vocal line again and again, namely: the words "baller" and "knallen" chopped up artificially in the studio so each word has several unnatural-sounding "la"sounds in the middle. This somehow sounds simultaneously energetic and relaxed, which matches the general feel of the lyrics: it's a break-up song where the protagonist is definitely not happy, but she's definitely gonna dance it off and get over it just fine.
My one reservation with this song in the ESC itself is that its USP is those robotically stuttering "la"s, which will be very difficult to reproduce satisfactorily in live performance. In the German semi-final, Tynna sang all the "la"s live, which was fine but missed out on the artificial-sounding coolness of the studio version. In the Final, she left the "la"s to be covered by the playback but this made the line sound irregular and broke the flow a bit. Let's see what they choose to do come showtime - I think maybe it could be done properly live by singing "al" instead of "la" and trying to put a glottal stop in front each time. Having tried that myself at home though, that does seem quite difficult to do neatly. Perhaps the duo should track down Montenegro's Nina Žižić when they get to Basel and she can be their advisor? She is, after all, the only person I've heard do a similar live impression of chopped-up studio vocals...
Australia: Go-Jo - "Milkshake Man" ★★
This one went straight on my 2025 Eurovision playlist after the first hearing. It's got a brisk disco feel (speeding along at 155bpm or so) with a harmonic progression and dreamy synth sounds that immediately make me think of Giorgio Moroder's production on proto-EDM disco classic I Feel Love. I say "a" harmonic progression, because while it's very effective, the only time this composition isn't using this particular 3-chord progression is when the bassline is left on its own for a few bars during the verses, and during the introduction, which is a snippet of the tune Greensleeves, converted into 4/4 meter:
The slight clash caused by the A♭ in the bassline maintains a little harmonic tension throughout: it's not part of the C major scale and it doesn't match the A♮ in the middle of the F chord. Additionally the high "ah" in the backing vocals that happens just before "well I've got chocolate..." hangs around on a D while the C major chord is in the accompaniment, giving the effect of a "C (add 9)" chord. So even though it's literally just 3 chords I feel harmonically satisfied. The variety in this tune is provided by dynamic range (quiet verse, loud chorus), vocal quality (sung, spoken, vocal fry) a call-and-response section "Sweet sweet!, yum yum!") and a face-melting synth solo.
I'm sure most of the commentary about this tune will be to do with the lyrics and the extent to which they're unacceptably sexual and/or creepy. This is a fair question, but there's certainly no "Kant", "Ich Komme" or similar words in here and all the entendres here are doubles. I fully expect this to be a fun stage show that qualifies for the final, and I'm very much hoping that Go-Jo demonstrates his unicycling talent on stage...
Netherlands: Claude - "C'est La Vie"
When I first heard this, I thought this was a solid 1-star rating: musically uninspiring but not offensively dull. However, after a couple more listens I find myself in the same no-star situation as I am with Luxembourg's entry this year, namely: I'm intensely annoyed by the "la la la"s in the chorus which are not mitigated by any of the accompanying music. The harmonic progression in the chorus relies largely on a "circle of fifths" idea (F♯m - Bm - E - A - F♯m - Bm - C♯7). It bores me to death partly because it's also used for the bridge section later on, and partly because of the plodding four-square rhythm that delivers it. This is especially disappointing after my expectations were raised by an accelerating triplet-feel passage just before the 4/4 beat drops.
The music video is really slick and has a pleasant narrative idea (a young Claude ends up dancing with present-day Claude to the song his mother taught him) and Claude seems like a strong live performer. So this will likely come across well on stage in Basel. But thinking about the audio only, this is probably my biggest "what on earth do people hear in this?" moment this year: lots of commentators suggest this as a possible winner, in particular a possible jury favourite, and I honestly cannot fathom how anyone thinks that.
Serbia: Princ - "Mila"
I had nothing in particular to do on the Friday night when Serbia held their national final, so I watched the whole thing, albeit without much focus. I was unimpressed overall and even accounting for my general bias against pop ballads, I certainly didn't pick this particular song out as a potential winner. In fact, the most entertaining thing I saw on the show was the host directing a quick sing-a-long of an apparently well-known Serbian song which all the performers in the green room joined in with perfectly despite the rhythm being an irregular compound meter (9/8, split into 2+2+2+3).
Princ's ballad, however, is solidly average and predictable. In a soporific 4/4 meter, it begins with melancholy piano chords, after which there is reasonably tasteful addition of strings at places. But fundamentally the chords are dull and the emotion is left solely for Princ's voice to carry, which is a shame because he doesn't have much to work with melody-wise. There are a few bars of pretty classy piano and acoustic guitar interlude later on, the benefit of which is quickly undone by the tacky over-production of the final minute or so. The electric guitar riff and lead line wouldn't be bad in a different context but it feels unskillfully tacked on here. The sudden addition of vocal harmony from a full-sounding choir on the backing track also feels quite cheap and un-earned. (Bring me 5 live backing singers to the Basel stage and I might feel differently!)
Princ's vocal delivery in his national final performance seemed strong, so hopefully I'll be able to award a few singy-faces come May. But this composition isn't getting any stars from me.
Denmark: Sissal - "Hallucination" ★
This pop-EDM tune has fantastically-executed vocals from Sissal, and some decent studio production, so I find it pleasant enough. This entry, and the delegation sending it, though, are a great illustration of how non-musical factors (including staging, choreography, PR and name recognition) are so crucial to being thought of as "potential Eurovision winner". For me, this song is easily as good as Loreen's most-recent ESC-winning number on behalf of Sweden (Tattoo) but because there's not as much buzz, the stage show looks pretty underwhelming, and the Danish delegation have a reputation (and record) of putting seemingly very little effort in, no-one sensible thinks this has any chance of winning the whole thing, and lots of commentators predict it will be knocked out in Semi-Final 2. Which is all rather a shame because this song is OK - sadly not quite enough to make in on to my playlist but that's just my taste. Here's hoping that Sissal's excellent vocals aren't undermined too much by weak staging!
Croatia: Marko Bošnjak - "Poison Cake" ★
My main impression of this composition is that it's making a lot of fuss without really having much interesting to build on. Literally the most memorable bits for me are the schoolyard teasing chants, while the other sections are melodically very sparse, for instance the chorus is just "poison cake" repeated on the same notes. The verses don't do any better either. At least there's some rhythmic interest which earns it 1 star from me, but at no point did I ever consider putting it on my playlist. I can imagine many comparisons being made to Ireland's entry from 2024, in that this song seems to be going for a "cartoonishly devilish" vibe and a mash-up of various different styles. But it doesn't have the underlying musical interest or vocal variety that Bambie Thug's song did.
Portugal: NAPA - "Deslocado" ★
I'm glad I left it a little while before writing this review, as I was deeply disappointed that we're left with zero metal representation in Eurovision 2025 because Henka didn't win the Portugese national final (though she did win the popular vote). Instead, Portugal is sending NAPA with this not-heavy-at-all rock song about yearning for home. It's poignant yet pleasant, and as far as I can tell, as a non-Portugese speaker, the lyrics are tastefully written. I would happily have this on in the background as I sat outside in the sun, drinking wine and waiting for my food to cook on a barbecue. I don't think it has enough going on in the orchestration though to make me actively seek it out - it *is* just fundamentally a rock band strumming their guitars, and they've made no real attempt to switch things up or add any textural interest. The vocalist doesn't have much to show off with either and so I can't see this making much headway in Basel. So in summary, good job NAPA, but not quite to my taste.
28 down, 9 more to go...
Nearly done with reviews now! I have plenty of things to say about Sweden's entry this year, so the remaining song reviews will get split into 2 further batches. And don't forget I'm still planning an extra batch of honourable mentions from this year's national finals too - watch this space!* 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
