Georgia have been a fairly consistent Eurovision nation since their first performance back in 2007. Overall, their best entries have been performed by powerful female vocalists, so this year, they’re hoping for another great result with Tamara Gachechiladze. Tamara was actually due to perform at the 2009 edition of Eurovision as part of Stephane & 3G, however Georgia withdrew from the contest due to the unwillingness to change the lyrics of their provocative entry ‘We Don’t Wanna Put In.’ This year, Tamara had to beat 24 other hopefuls as part of a national final, and she prevailed with a considerable lead on the second placed act. The song she will be taking to Eurovision is called Keep the Faith, but is there any faith that we’ll see Georgia in the final?
The Georgian song was one of the first to be selected for the 2017 season, and it was quickly dismissed by a lot of Eurovision fans, including myself. I just found the song to be quite dreary, and never really gave it a full chance. Now that all the songs are chosen, I found myself going back and listening to the songs I never really gave a chance, and now I’m annoyed I didn’t. The song did get a slight revamp, although I don’t think the changes were too drastic, so I wish I had listened to this back then with more of an open mind.
This song is super dramatic from start to finish, and the strings backing Tamara’s incredible voice add so much tension and atmosphere to this song. The song builds incredibly well over the three minutes, and Tamara really belts out some incredible notes throughout the song. Out of all the participating vocalists, Tamara is one of the best of this year. Her voice is built for big ballads like this song, and that will definitely become apparent through the live performance of the song on the Eurovision stage. We’ve seen Tamara hit the promo tour, and she’s impressed me every time.
I will be quite interested to see how they stage this. It’s a song that could get away with props, but also a song that could absolutely slay with Tamara on stage alone or with backing singers. Interesting lighting and stage backgrounds could really lift the song and highlight that atmosphere within the song.
Overall, this is one of the biggest growers on me. I can see this absolutely slaying on stage with Tamara’s incredible vocals, and although it hasn’t been talked of much by the Eurovision bubble, I really would not be surprised at all to see this in the Grand Final. I’d actually be more surprised to see this not in the final. There’s quite a few female lead slower songs or ballads in the first semi-final, and I think Georgia’s biggest competition in the semi-final would be Albania, who has a similar style song – although I think this one is better. If you had asked me what I would rate this song a few months ago, or even a few weeks ago, I would have given a pretty average rating, but I’m really loving this right now. I’m going to give it an 8/10.
