World of Chig   

8.5.03

24 Romania – Don’t Break My Heart – Nicola
It’s not often I use the word ‘astonishing’ to describe a Eurovision entry these days, but this is one of two songs this year which have made my jaw hit the ground in shock. The Austrian song is just astonishingly leftfield, but Romania’s entry is astonishing because it is so unexpected. I have never forgiven them for their 2000 entry, ‘Luna’; a song so mournfully, painfully bad that I cursed them for wasting three minutes of my life every time I heard it in Stockholm. Last year, although Romania redeemed themselves with a powerful ballad that no one rated until rehearsals, it was an unsurprising kind of song for Romania to enter; old-fashioned and grandiose. The country of the former Ceacescus, gypsies, orphanages, Dracula and, er, the Cheeky Girls, is not, after all, going to send a breakneck speed, wriggling, skittering drum’n’bass track, is it? Except that’s exactly what they’ve done. You just have to hear it. I have a feeling this will bomb horribly, falling between every possible stool of the Eurovision voting audience, but Romania deserves an award for bravery. How this got to win their national final, I will never know, but praise the god of musical diversity that it did. For the record, I think it’s pretty good, and could be a commercial hit across many European countries. It’s also nothing like the UB40 hit of the same name.

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