Eurovision 2019 is the year of jury darlings. No less than 9 times this preselection season, a song won without the support of the televoters. ESCDaily introduces them all to you in the build-up to Tel Aviv, moving on with ZENA from Belarus.
Belarus held their national final Nationalny Otbor on March 7th 2019. Nine out of the ten songs that took part, where in the English language. The only familiar name in the line-up was the band Napoli, however, they did not come out on top. ZENA became the winner with 69 points. BLGN & Mirex finished second with 65 points and Napoli finished 7th out of 10. Therefore Zena became the Eurovision representative for Belarus.
However, Zena did not receive a single televote in order to win the national final. Nationalny Otbor was decided on a 100% jury vote. Seven jurors ranked the songs on a scale of 1 to 10, and ZENA received the maximum score from almost all of them.
“Like it” (Belarus, Eurovision 2019)
While ZENA is a friendly looking girl-next-door type, and the verses of her song go easy on the ears, it is still difficult to say whether juries in Eurovision will relate to it the way they did in Belarus’ national final. ZENA’s vocals will be a key factor in this regard. During the show in Belarus, they did not hold up well in a relatively flat song.
Televoters, on the other hand, could be tempted by an upbeat chorus, a beautiful girl, or perhaps by a well-rehearsed dance act that the Belarussian delegation claims to be preparing for Tel Aviv. However, we will never know for sure. And we don’t have any comparative voting data, as Belarus decided not to test any of their entries to a national televote.
The alternative: BLGN & Mirex – Champion
BLGN & Mirex finished second in Belarus’ national final, but we will never know which song would have won the televote. Do you think Belarus should have chosen differently?
The runner up would have been a sure non qualifier. no catchy hook and just as weak vocals. Some jurors never rated the 10 songs lower than 8. How is that called competition? and having the second song in the draw scoring maximum minus 1 point was never meant to make competition exciting. Winner was probably decided beforehand.