Australia: Kate Miller-Heidke – Zero Gravity

Shi: Basically, this is Cezar, with better English, a nicer face, a way better voice and slightly less tacky staging. Not that I know what this will be like on stage as Kate has apparently changed things from the national final, but having seen Cezar’s staging in 2013, I still feel very confident about that last statement.

Apparently, what happens when you let Australia hold a national final is you’re reminded that they are part of the Commonwealth. And the Commonwealth apparently has a very specific vision of what Eurovision entries are supposed to look and sound like. In the case of “Zero Gravity”, they kind of missed the memo about how build-ups are supposed to build up to something – but honestly, by the point at which the build-up happens (or doesn’t), whatever target audience this song has will already be voting for it.

Luckily for Australia, Kate is so damn talented and likable that they manage to land on the right side of the Eurovision cliché fence, which should mean a pretty easy semi qualification. But I really do hope this entry prompts Europe’s TV broadcasters to add some variation to their pre-performance alerts. “The next performance includes strobes, flashing lights and a perpetual earworm”, you know, that kind of thing.

Martin: This song should probably annoy me, and the fact that it doesn’t is almost all down to Kate. She manages to make me believe she’s not taking things too seriously (even with a visualisation of depression flying around behind her on a big stick). It all feels very “written for ESC”, but I can cope with that.

Felix: But also, less fun than Cezar. It’s a nice try to become a Eurovision classic, but they forgot they need a song for that. Whatever you want to call this combination of sounds and lyrics, I find it downright bad. I enjoyed “La Voix“, I loved “It’s My Life”, but I loathe this.

video and title image source: eurovision.tv