Poland: Gromee feat. Lukas Meijer – Light Me Up

Martin: My initial response to “Light Me Up” was that it’s the 2018 version of last year’s Norwegian entry. Not that it’s the same genre as “Grab The Moment” as such, but there are obvious similarities – a contemporary, clothing-store-advert-ready tune by a DJ project fronted by a more charismatic singer, filling a niche that, for whatever reason, isn’t often directly addressed by ESC.

The producers obviously agree to an extent, as they’ve given it more or less the same slot in the running order. And yet that’s also where the similarities end.

Gromee isn’t faceless (or indeed masked) in the way that JOWST was, and that’s already less than ideal, because – much as I hate to say it – his image doesn’t quite fit the song. It’d be hypocritical to say he just seems too old for it considering he’s a month younger than me, but you know what I mean. Meanwhile, Lucas Meijer is not as vocally assured or naturally personable as Aleksander Walmann.

However, the friendly, accessible nature of the song, and especially the post-chorus instrumental drop, could easily be enough to create a nice moment of crowd participation and help Poland through to the grand final once again. Unlike Norway 2017, though, I don’t expect them to light up the scoreboard once they’re there – this is just too vanilla to make a real impact.

Felix: How cheap can a Eurovision entry be? Poland must have thought “oh, this sounds like 2018, let’s vote for it!”, and they picked one of the worst options they had in their strong national final. Musically flat, optically irritating, you don’t win a song contest on television with this.

Shi: It came up on my shuffle this morning and I had no clue what it was. Once I looked at the screen and realized it was this, I tried to remember what it sounds like. While I was one of the biggest Norway supporters last year, this lacks the hook, the groove and someone with the same performing ability.

video and title image source: eurovision.tv