Russia have been a consistent participant at Junior Eurovision since 2005, and since then have won the contest a total of two times, the first in 2006 and then again last year in 2017 with Polina Bogusevich. Aside from their wins, the nations has managed to stay in the Top 10 each and every year at the contest. This year it will be up to Anna Filipchuk with her uplifting song, Unbreakable, but will their Top 10 streak be unbreakable?
Coming off a win, and then previous to that, one of my all-time favourite Junior Eurovision entries, Russia needed to pull something out of the bag to match that, and unfortunately that isn’t the case with this entry.
This is a fairly inoffensive uplifting pop entry which at times feels quite generic and quite underwhelming. The highlight of the song for me is the chorus which is catchy and memorable, and it’s the part of the song that has a bit more punch to it. As for the verses, I don’t think that they give a good first impression of the song, and then we see the change to English upon the second verse and chorus which also makes the song feel underwhelming. I also don’t think that the mixture of the backing music, the melody and her vocals blend well in the verses and in the live performance, it sometimes feels as if she is getting swallowed up by the lyrics and unable to keep time.
This year we’ve seen songs expertly integrate their native language and English, but Russia has gone the traditional route of just featuring a verse and chorus in Russian, then a verse and chorus in English, and compared to the other songs and their transitions to English, this feels very jarring especially as the English lyrics sound contrived.
Despite that, with a good stage show, this will probably land itself in the Top 10, if not the lower end of it. There was a youthful feel to the music video despite the song not necessarily being a youthful song, and it will be interesting to see if they carry that through to the stage performance, or if they will go with something a little more traditional like in their national final. Vocally I don’t think this is the most impressive we will see on the night, but saying that, it has been a fair few months since this was chosen at the national final, and hence time to improve on the performance.
For me personally this slips out of my Top 10, but being Russia I can see it sneak into the Top 10 in the actual results. I’m torn on this song because I do love the choruses, but the song as a whole feels fairly average. For me, it’s 6/10.
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