UMK’s opening song surprises with Eurodance, but remains hollow

New the opening song of the music competition is old-school Eurodance. This has not been heard in Finland’s Eurovision qualifiers for a while.

This is a pop artist from Nurmijärvi Neea Riverwho wants to be an international “pop machine”. Neea River (right No, Jokinen) has written songs not only for himself, but also for several other artists, from Portion Boys to Poland’s 2023 Five Representative.

For some, sarcastic Nightmares-song can sound too familiar, like a drunken whiff of the bar life of your youth. For the new generation, eurodance is a new genre.

High quality the sounding pop song has the ingredients to become a commercial radio hit. It could very well be German Cascadan from a pen. The creators of the song are, in addition to the artist himself, a musician Petri Alanko and Lithuania’s visa representative The Roop Disco – who wrote the song Ilkka Wirtanen. The Lithuanian five competed in the 2021 final and came in 8th place.

The first ones however, after listening several times, there is almost nothing left of the eurodance song. A black-and-white music video with few gestures needs a story and visual appeal.

In the song, River sings about nightmares whose time is over. So it’s a power song, but a very generic one. As a lyric Nightmares resembles a lot Saara Aalton Monsters-song, whose visa success was weak in 2018.

It’s exciting to see how River’s electronic dance song turns into a functional five-level live performance. The difficult and high pitch of the chorus demands a lot from the artist.

Eurodance and dance stage are a difficult combination. Seen in last year’s final, from Austria Kaleen’s We Will Rave oli was one of the early favorites of viusu fans. The uneven and lackluster performance did not convince all viewers, and Kaleen finished second to last in the final.

Correction 9.1. 12:04 p.m.: Contrary to what was erroneously mentioned earlier in the story, The Roop represented Lithuania at Eurovision in 2021, not 2023. The performance placed eighth, not 11th.