Eurovision will hear us, but not understand us

Sandris Vanzovičs schedule14.feb 2022

The victory of Citi zēni in the much-talked-about Supernova contest means that Latvia will be represented at the 66th International Eurovision Song Contest in Turin in mid-May with the song "Eat Your Salad" by these six guys.

A phenomenal start to the year for Citi zēni

The message of Citi zēni is very appealing these days - in short, "it's sexy to live green and environmentally friendly", except that these lively and spirited guys have dressed it up in rather suggestive lyrics, which at least the conservative Brits are far from thrilled about. Nevertheless, the number of views of "Eat Your Salad" on Sunday morning approached 60 million (!), which means that our Eurovision song will definitely be heard, but whether it will be understood is another question. If the other contestants will take the role of sufferers à la Miks Dukurs or heartbreaking Aminata-style ballads, Citi zēni will undoubtedly stand out, but Eurovision is usually a raucous party, so it's safe to assume that there will be plenty of other such guys in Turin too. But that's okay - they will be able to present themselves, and at least in their career development this contest will be a very important step.

"Our trump card is our energy, our youth and our passion to show the world what we are capable of. Although the song has already been successful abroad, we do not plan to stop there. The sun shines the brightest on the mountain tops, and we are ready to climb to the top!" the musicians themselves confirm this.

The band Citi zēni consists of Jānis Pētersons (vocals), Dagnis Roziņš (vocals, saxophone), Reinis Višķeris (keys), Krišjānis Ozols (guitar), Roberts Memmēns (bass) and Toms Kagainis (drums). The band's debut album "Suņi iziet ielās" was released at the end of 2021, and this year started with a sensational second place in the Musical Bank poll (with the song "Limuzīns uz krīta"). The follow-up is in a few weeks' time when Citi zēni are likely to win the music recording award "Golden Microphone" as the best debut of 2021. Latvian media will now wait for the moment when the boys will fulfil the promise they made during the Supernova broadcast to tattoo the band's logo on "those cheeks"...

Great job by Aminata, Miks Galvanovskis was a surprise

The overall rating was based on a 50/50 vote of the audience and the jury, which made it possible to observe the preliminary results with a calmer heart. Citi zēni had already taken a convincing lead at the beginning, leaving behind the band Bujāns and Aminata - there was a reasonable expectation that the jury would not be so charmed by Bujāns as to place the 80s disco-style love trash by Intars Busulis and Reinis Sējāns in high places.

No complaints about Aminata. She would have been a good compromise - the song may not be stunning, but it was nothing to be ashamed of either. Seven years ago Aminata won Latvia the high sixth place with "Love Injected", and now of course she has even more experience. On the other hand, there was nothing particularly new in her song or in her performance, just a different dress. Bujāns is a different story - also on social networks during the concert there were numerous concerns that the audience, who have been called "aunties in Bauska", will vote for this duet because "Busulis is so cool". It's a good thing that they cut off a large part of the votes with their stupid bujāning, because the potential voters were hardly thrilled by the statement that they "composed this song together with the people", and it's doubtful that the joy was increased by the inappropriate laughter, chanting "Latvia! Latvia!" and other "arrows of love" from the stage. I suspect that this was the aim of Bujāns - to deliberately create a bad impression of themselves so that, God forbid, they don't have to go to the Eurovision final and waste their time on it.

Compared to the Supernova semi-final, many of the contestants had improved their skills by the final. For example, Miks Galvanovskis had toned down his uncontrollable outbursts of emotions, Raum changed his visual image (admittedly, it is debatable whether for the better...), the promising Linda Rušeniece looked and sounded more convincing, even Miks Dukurs sounded better, only Elīna Gluzunova, for some reason, unfortunately was the opposite. The scandalist Ralfs Eilands and Mēs jūs mīlam grabbed the other driving force of this project Kaspars Breidaks from Spain and even set fire to Rojs Rodžers' non-existent breasts, but there was one problem - this performance works well if you see it for the first time, but the second time it already becomes a seen film or a read book.

Supernova as a money-making project

This Supernova was a money-milking venture from the audience, which started with the interesting calculations, delegating 11 out of 17 semi-finalists to the final (I wonder how math teachers will explain this to their students...), and continued with the insistent calls to vote for your favorites, which this time was unlimited. If the semi-final received around 100,000 votes in total (or so said Lauris Reiniks, the host of the event), it is hard to imagine how many votes were cast in the final, but it should be recalled that each call was worth 14 cents. Social networks turned into a big "vote for us, vote, vote, vote!" platform, broadcasting this call even more often than Prime Minister Krišjānis Kariņš usually calls for getting vaccinated.

By the way, LTV delivered some unpleasant surprises. As for the technical problems with Miks Dukurs' song in the semi-final, everything is clear - these things can happen. Some time ago, social networks were outraged by the public television's desire to overdub Depeche Mode's concert songs, but this time Lauris was allowed to speak live in English without subtitles to "viewers around the world" for a long time - the fact that a translation can be made during such impromptu events was proven by interviews with representatives of Estonia and Lithuania. Another minus was the Q&A section - at times the questions were stretched across the screen, at others they were played like a news tape at the bottom of the screen, and at such a fast pace that it was unclear where to look and what was being answered. By the way, the winners of this section should be Bermudu divstūris, who were the only ones who managed to give interesting answers, and who also got the most out of it by telling us that the band had a new album and a tour coming this year - if so, it was finally clear what they were doing in the Supernova. These were not the only details of the contest organization where I would have expected LTV to be more precise.

And in the end, some information: the 66th International Eurovision Song Contest in Turin will feature the song by Citi zēni in the first semi-final on May 10. Albania, Switzerland, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Moldova, Ukraine, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Norway, Russia, Portugal, Denmark, Armenia, Austria, Croatia, Iceland and Greece will also take part in it. The second semi-final of Eurovision will take place on May 12 and the final will be on May 14.

Supernova 2022 results: