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===TIER: POINTS!
(12) GUYANA -- 아이유 {너랑 나}
-- This is my kind of silky orchestral. I suspect that this experience is improved by not understanding the vocals, but I'm more optimistic than usual that this read is incorrect. The transition to the bridge is odd, but other than that this mostly hits all the right (metaphorical) notes. Cool dance moves.
(10) NEW ZEALAND -- AURORA {Winter Bird}
-- I like how this sounds. It has the chords I'm into, it plays with its textures while still staying within euphony, and it generally keeps my attention. Not a huge fan of the vocals - more "eeh" and less "aah" - but they'll do.
(8) GERMANY -- VNV Nation {When is the Future?}
-- I'm not huge into synthpop but Germany is on a commendable streak of putting some quality examples of the genre into contests. It's kind of monotone but it does it right. Being the guy in the video is :goals:, and I'm extremely fortunate to have done it once already; tbh the video on its own may have pushed this into this tier.
===TIER: POINTS~
(7) SOUTH KOREA -- 블락비 {닐리리 맘보}
-- Aw yiss the dirrty south is represented. It jumps, it pops, it's catchy, it's fun, it's deeply embarrassing to witness.
(6) USA -- The Ghost Inside {Aftermath}
-- This would be pretty cool if it were instrumental. The transition around 2:20 or so seems half-baked. 3:37 was a great moment. Ultimately I respect its genuine commitment to its subject matter more than the songs below it; it's pretty common for songs of tragedy and such to get submitted to the Contest but this one actually seems to be hitting me. That's the primary reason why this is so high tbh; I still don't like how almost the whole song is in this vocal style.
===TIER: POINTS
(5) CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC -- The Hoosiers {A Sadness Runs Through Him}
-- I was expecting it to move from acoustic at some point, which speaks to some conditioning from Song Contests :V It's pretty pretentious - especially that chorus - but kind of nice to listen to; it flows well.
(4) SINGAPORE -- 水瀬いのり {ココロソマリ}
-- I respect that human beings can bring their voice into the moé register but it's one of the things I like least about Japan. The song itself is actually very good and is well-designed to accommodate the vocals, but I just... don't want to have my ears challenged like this.
(3) RUSSIA -- Любэ {Не валяй дурака, Америка!}
-- Entries submitted under Russia have a tendency to be at least mildly cursed. This and Asgardia are probably the entries that were closest to pandering to my interests. I'm not sure how I feel about the accordion-meets-guitar style but I don't hate it. There are probably better Russian-language novelty songs out there - or stereotypically Russian songs for that matter - but this one will do.
===TIER: POINTS?
(2) SPAIN -- Grails {Take Refuge}
-- This honestly sounds pretty reasonable. It's directionless background music, which is very not me, but I'm actually okay with this. It definitely helps that you caught me at a time when my brain is minimally functional. Eight minutes is a bit much though.
(1) BELARUS -- Astronautalis {The Wondersmith and His Sons}
-- There's a reason you're told in music composition not to write in octaves - they're hard to keep in tune, and I can tell. I appreciate its pulse and commitment to going at its own cadence. I would probably like this better if the lyrics were someplace easily accessible. The vocalist needs to eat another box of cigarettes to improve the experience.
COTE D'IVOIRE -- Lyre Le Temps {Rob the Banker}
-- I was hoping for a song about cheating at Monopoly and was disappointed. Is it supposed to sound vaguely reggae? I appreciate the artistic vision but I'm not into this enough to get into how repetitive it is.
DJIBOUTI -- Slaughter To Prevail {DEMOLISHER}
-- I get that they're Russian, but there's something about the extreme pastiness of this that makes it hard to watch :V Not the best band to wear demonic masks. This is the musical equivalent of 5-Hour Energy and it does its job how you'd expect it to. Hard to rate because it's so dissimilar to everything else in the contest.
ARGENTINA -- Ajay Gogavale & Atul Gogavale {Yaad Lagla}
-- Music to eat biryani to. The orchestra and Indian instruments working together distinguish it, but I'm not completely sure it works - the timbre of the vocals causes a muddying effect against the strings. This kind of happened and I'm not enthusiastic about it, but it's hardly worst-in-genre. I would probably say the same about any movie half-incidental track, especially with how some of its big moments feel inorganic.
SEYCHELLES -- KASHIWA Daisuke {meteor}
-- I'm not sure what this song is aiming for because the drum set and everyone else seem to have different ideas. The relatively-inoffensive-pretty-sounding lane is usually enough to get points from me but this one didn't break through. Someone should probably look at all of those traffic signals.
===TIER: NO POINTS
ASGARDIA -- GLORYHAMMER {The Siege of Dunkeld (In Hoots We Trust)}
-- This was a whiff, tbh. As entertaining as it is to imagine dark/fecal/robotic/space zombies eating England, this is deeply cliched and on some level it feels like they're not trying. The lead vocalist's weak grasp of English does not serve him well, and the song is not ostentatious enough to make up for it. Well, he found his true calling as a gentlegod later.
DENMARK -- Picturesque {Unannounced}
-- White guy with a guitar doing a LOT of emoting. Not sure if incel song. It wins some placement for sheer energy - that's a LOT of high pitches getting taken on - but there's so much self-pity here that it's kind of grating.
ICELAND -- The Hirsch Effekt {Agitation}
-- When I first saw the length I placed a bet that this wouldn't justify it. It was better than I expected but still didn't need its whole running length, and listening to it for any length of time caused me to feel exhausted. The vocals would have been better if they could blend in and make more use of those chords, but... this language only offers so much in that regard :V
GREECE -- Rotersand {Exterminate Annihilate Destroy}
-- It's a good hook but what's supporting it isn't working for me. Not sure if fascist song.
===TIER: NO POINTS.
LIECHTENSTEIN -- Blackway & Black Caviar {What's Up Danger}
-- That's a really strange fantasy-creature-dying sound. I appreciate the commitment to a lesser-seen genre in contests; I don't feel like this is a good exemplar of the genre though.
EGYPT -- Samm Henshaw {Broke}
-- Nice, both Pokemon Stadium 2 and Donkey Kong 64. Don't plug the cartridge in that way >:[ This is actually heavier than I was expecting. This isn't my style at all.
SUDAN -- 12RODS {RED}
-- The picture for this song has overwhelming '10s shitpost energy and I love it. The song is soupy monotexture. It's too clangy and squealy to leave in the background and it's too obnoxious to listen to intently, so overall it's... too noisy for me to go for.
CANADA -- Cast of Alice by Heart {Another Room in Your Head}
-- White people, guitar, emoting. I spent my whole youth listening to old people music and I got away from that. Whoever is playing those mezzopiano upper-register notes out in the 1:20 area is being asked to do a tough job and not succeeding.
YEMEN -- Colour Revolt {Ageless Everytime}
-- Very little of this went the direction I expected. I can see how this is someone's jam, but to me it's pretty nondescript if not tediously pretentious. A close cousin of white-guy-with-guitar-attempting-to-emote. There's no reason for some of this dissonance.
ARMENIA -- Cat Power {I Found a Reason}
-- This is another vocal style I don't have a lot of patience for. At least it's mostly in tune.
THAILAND -- Postmodern Jukebox {Bad Romance (ft. Ariana Savalas & Sarah Reich)}
-- So after the first round of the prior contest, I felt a need to detox, and I chose David Guetta feat. Sia - Titanium. Me and Equinox agreed that the song was good except for how it murders its climax in broad daylight, and E suggested a cover. That was how I found PMJ. I didn't really think their cover was what I wanted, but then this came up in my recommendations.
All of the good stuff PMJ did was definite 8 points maybe not 12 points for me, and it was agonizing to pick one performance to enter because there was something to have misgivings about in all of them. You barely missed out on seeing one of these others--
*"Hey Ya!"
*"Take Me to Church"
*"Pony"
Humorously, all three of those have been entered in some form during the past 15 Song Contests.
My country was Thailand because I screwed up. Laos is the one that criminalizes one-night-stands with foreigners (i.e. bad romances).
I may have heard the original Bad Romance at most once prior to hearing this cover. After (re)visiting the original, A) I understood why people reacted Like That to Lady Gaga, and B) I was impressed with how the Lady got famous, what with being saddled with both a Yankee accent and a southern drawl.
IHBTIM 96 wrote:Thailand - Bad but interesting! I feel more cultured for having seen this bad song
I see you have taste in bad music.
give me a point for it you cowherd
Anyways, this is still the most points you've given to a 'serious' entry of mine. 
