At first, I thought the Slovenians had lost their marbles. They had a soft and sweet little ballad, a bit unspectacular but nice, when they suddenly decided to go hardcore on us.
I wasn't sure that little Omar Naber would be able to carry the load on stage, I didn't find the preview very promising, and I thought the emo makeup just made the song harder to grasp.
And then, in Kyiv, I changed my mind. Big time. Omar Naber emerged like a true star, keeping his difficult song under complete control all the way through. Instead of drowning the whole thing in pathos, he works with small gestures and a slowly added roughness to the voice.
When the song really takes off and the drama gets going, then Omar stays steadily on the ground, fully delivering every syllabe of the fantastic lyrics .
This is the best performance Slovenia sent in to Eurovision if you ask me, but back in the day, with twenty-five songs in the semi and rather a small audience, a song as difficult as this didn't have much hope.
In all fairness, he did get closer to the final than I thought.
He would only have deserved so much more.
Omar Naber - Stop (Slovenia 2005)
No comments:
Post a Comment