Estonia were amongst the early favorites to win the competition, even before they had selected their entry. The Indie-esque national final of Eesti Laul was used again this year, giving room to various styles of music yet again.
2 semi finals were held before the big final which consisted of 10 songs, in all honesty most of the good songs made it through while the less impressive ones stayed in the semi, so I will focus only on the songs that were in the final:
This time i’ll start from the song finishing 10th, and will work my way up until I get to the winner.
10th: Luisa Värk – former idol runner-up and wife of Estonian Prime Minister, this was her 2nd attempt at the contest (the previous one was a duet in 2008 with Stig Rästa’s band Traffic). The song was pleasent enough, typical Estonian radio song, the performance was OK too, there was just nothing really interesting there. Luisa was obviously not pleased with her result ;).
9th: Maia Vahtramäe – Probably the least impressive performance of the night for me, she was off for some parts of the song, and the song itself is quite boring.
8th: The Blurry Lane – The song itself is not that bad, but the performance killed it for me, she really took all the life out of the song. The televoters seemed to have liked it more placing it 5th (compared to the juries last place).
7th: Kali Briis Band – This is actually a good indie-electro song, and the performance was nicely done too, but its just not a song for the broader audience, as its very niche.
6th: Robin Juhkental & The Big Bangers – Robin has already represented Estonia back in 2010 together with old band Malcolm Lincoln. This time Robin went for a happier and more soulful tune. The song is quite good for its genre, however I have to say Robin wasn’t at his best, particularly towards the end of the performance. His semi-final performance was miles ahead, it was still enough to finish as the 3rd favorite with the juries.
5th: Triin Niitoja & John4 – I found this to be a bland pop-country Ronan Keating type of song that probably escaped from the Danish final and ended here by mistake. I found the song tediously annoying and the performance was very forced as the singers didn’t really have chemistry between them. I was really worried this might be the surprise winner, but thankfully it was not to happen.
4th: Elephants From Neptune – This was the indie rock song of the night, I can’t really spot what it reminds me , but it definitely has a bit of Strokes and other early 2000s indie acts sound. The performance was actually very professional, and although personally I think the song is dated for its genre and not that good, the performance totally made up for it. It almost won the jury vote as it was placed 2nd, however the audience only placed it 7th which prevented it from making the super final.
3th: Elisa Kolk – This was the pop ballad of the evening. All in all a good song, the performance was a bit flat, and I found the whole package to be a little bit too cheesy. It almost sounded like a Melodifestivalen reject to me. On backing vocals was 6-times participant Rolf Roosalu, who can clearly be heard in some parts of the song, still all this didn’t help.
2nd: Daniel Levi – This was the surprise of the competition, when I heard the song at first in studio version it was not as impressive as Daniel’s amazing live performance. The song is a pop-rock song, very upbeat , very energetic and so was the performance. Daniel was spot on his vocals, even when he stage dived into the audience. If only he wasn’t up against such a strong entry as the winner was, he could have easily won this and he would have been a very dignified representative for Estonia.
This leaves us with the winner, who are Elina Born & Stig Rästa. Elina has participated in Eesti Laul 2 years ago right off the back of her finishing 2nd on Estonian Idol, but could only finish 8th. For Stig this is technically his 8th attempt, as he previously competed twice with his band Slobodan River, 4 times with his current band Traffic, and one time with his project band the Outloudz. His closest was in 2009 with Traffic and in 2011 with Outloudz, both times he lost the superfinal to finish 2nd.
This song was the big favorite to win since it was out, and it of course didn’t disappoint and won the superfinal with 79% of the total votes between the top 3 songs, and also received record breaking number of votes in the previous rounds.
The song is a melancholy duet between the two, as they work very well together on the song. The original concept of the performance was that they were not supposed to look at each other, maybe an exact contrast to the Common Linnets performance from last year, this was however changed and now they do look at each other, even so if not facing one another directly. The black and white screening and the the whole staging create a wonderful atmosphere to the message of the song, and as a package it is very impressive, as it’s a very well written song, and sounds totally professional.
I still have a hard time seeing it as the winner, because I think its not very easily accessible to get the whole song and its concept on first listen, but here’s hoping its gonna be another well deserved great result for Estonia.
Eurovision Israel 