2016 Reviews – Austria – Zoë – Loin d’ici

This year, Austria has chosen Zoë as their representative, singing the song Loin d’ici. The song is entirely in French, which is a first for Austria, who regularly send songs in German or English. Last year, in their home country, Austria undeservingly ended up with nul points, but will this year be any better?

The song begins very sweetly both with Zoë’s voice, and the backing music. At the beginning, the song does sound promising, however once you have heard the first chorus, that seems to be all there is to the song. I find that the song doesn’t really develop over the 3 minutes. I want more from this song, and I wish this song would build into something really intense to contrast such a sweet beginning. The song is almost sickly sweet and it’s missing something vital to make this song something special.

Her voice is nice, and suits this cutesy pop genre, but I think for Eurovision a song needs something more than just a cutesy voice and song. Her live performance is relatively good, or as good as the song can be. Her performances over the promo period improved, and it seemed that her confidence in the song had grown. She got a lot of support at the London promo party, and this could be a sign that the song is more loved than I thought.

One thing that I do enjoy is the stage performance. Her outfit in the national final makes her look like an enchanting fairy, and with the background, it makes for such a bright and visually appealing display. I do like the idea of her walking through fields and forests and whatever else there is – I think this is a nice idea, and from what I understand, this will be used again for Eurovision.

For me, this song is ok to listen to on stage in Eurovision but I don’t really have the desire to listen to it over and over again. Unlucky for Austria, it’s in semi-final one, which as we know is a bloodbath. I just have a feeling this might be left behind, but we’ll see.

I’m going to give this a 5/10.

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