It’s been an action packed first day in the Eurovision arena for the first of the rehearsals, and we’ve been there to cover it all! Each day, we aim to bring an in-depth recap of the happenings of the day, including summaries and thoughts on the rehearsals of each act. Here’s the action from Day 1!
Iceland
Next up in today’s rehearsals was Iceland, and it was definitely a different approach and tone in comparison with the opening number of Azerbaijan. Here’s our thoughts.
Visuals:
What Azerbaijan had, Iceland lacked in this first rehearsal. The colours across the stage are warm, primarily in red, orange and yellow. The team has chosen to use a lot of closer range shots to make use of Ari’s charm, although through the first rehearsals he seemed a bit lacklustre in the facial expressions department.
Visually the stage performance is a bit confusing, and doesn’t have a clear direction. The backing team are front and centre with Ari, which is something we don’t often see, although Iceland are notorious for featuring their backing artists on stage, rather than hiding them in the back like many other nations choose to do. The smoke machine is used in this one too, and realistically, smoke makes anything look better on the Eurovision stage!
Costuming:
This was probably one of the least appealing costumes of the day, with Ari featured in a white suit with red detailing that looks awfully like the pattern of a motherboard. It was a strange costuming choice considering the class of his simple suit in the national selection, but I suppose when you’re last in the betting odds of winning the semi-final, you might as well go all out.
The backing singers are wearing that same tone of red that’s in the details of Ari’s jacket, and each of the backing artists has their own individual costuming. It’s definitely not the most appealing of the day.
Vocals:
What Azerbaijan was lacking, Iceland had. Ari’s vocals were I would say impressive, but still with room to improve. It’s definitely not a bad vocal performance, and there were no vocal surprises throughout the performance in comparison to other artists today who chose to do a bit of improvisation work through their songs.
