It’s been a tough decade for Israel. Back in 2010, Harel Skaat was tipped for a podium finish only to end up in 14th place. Since then, the country on the fringes of Europe has continued to slip backwards, failing to qualify for the grand final on four successive occasions – a trend that reached a new low when ChatVote 2014 winner Mei Finegold limped to second-last place in her semi-final in Copenhagen, scoring just 19 points. With internal selections and regular national finals failing to come up with a successful formula, this year broadcaster IBA decided to piggyback on an existing format, the TV talent show Rising Star, to select its entrant in a public vote before coming up with a song internally.

Born in late 1998 (that’s right folks, the first ESC singer born in the “new” millennium isn’t far away!), Nadav Guedj is the lucky man(boy) who was chosen to represent three-time winner Israel at the 2015 event in Vienna. He possesses a strong R&B voice combined with an awkward goofball charm that works well with the right song, but that could easily misfire with the wrong one.

The big question, then, is whether Golden Boy is the right song. It certainly occupies its own niche within this year’s line-up – there’s a shortage of upbeat songs in the first place, and properly silly upbeat songs are seriously thin on the ground. As a composition, it’s absolutely packed with hooks, and I love some of the touches in the lyrics – the “Tel Aviv” couplet is cheesy but memorable, and the “we gotta go, three minutes, bye bye” ending is so obvious it makes you wonder why it hasn’t been done before. The challenge is to make all these little plus points gel into a coherent whole, something that can cross over from the friendly audience the song will undoubtedly enjoy on the Euroclub dancefloor to the wider European population.

A lot of people talk about political factors being a barrier to Israel in recent years, but my verdict is that the result this song gets will depend on two things alone: appropriate staging and a good performance from Nadav himself. Tall and gangly for his 16 years, what we’ve seen of the studio rehearsals suggests that Nadav will be left to largely concentrate on the singing while three male dancers shoulder the majority of the choreography. That’s probably a wise idea. If that can coalesce into a performance that really “owns” the cameras while remaining strong enough in the vocal department to persuade the juries, Israel could be onto something here.

To put it another way, there’s always room in this contest for confidently staged trash – just ask Paula & Ovi, Jedward, Sarbel… – but the keyword is “confidence”. Nadav doesn’t seem to be lacking in it, and if he can deliver a performance that’s visually and vocally charming (it doesn’t have to be perfect), that ought to put him in a good position. Any obvious cracks in the overall package, though, and there are plenty of competitors in the second semi-final just waiting to take his spot in the Saturday night running order with something far less fun but more boringly competent. I hope not, though: while the emoticon below suggests that this isn’t quite my cup of tea musically, I really want it in the grand final to provide a bit of desperately-needed variety.

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