Re: UKRAINE 2018
So a little comment on (some of) the acts (so far we barely know any songs):
Tayanna :
I Love You from last year's edition was just an average standard ballad with banal English lyrics, I really don't get why everyone was raving about it so much as we always get a handful of these in ESC every year, atleast in the original Russian version it had a bit of that "East-Slavic" feel to it, but with English even the little thing that would have made it stand out in ESC disappeared, blandness and fake emotions is all I got from it... no thank you! (however the national selection 2017 was pretty crap so this was still one of the few "decent" ones).
Tayanna however won me over this year, starting off with her lead from her EP;
Shkoda which turned out to be a grower-bop and her EP in general was a strong release, including
Kvitka, that would have been such a great entry for Ukraine after some years of half-depressing ballads (yes I liked Jamala, Zlata and Alyosha, but I still miss the more "fun"-side of Ukraine) and don't get me started on the dreadful amateur pseudo-"rock" we got in 2017...
Kvitka was well-produced and managed to combine ethno and modern Pop in a fresh way, also super catchy and plus that it was sung in native language, it will be a loss for ESC and Ukraine not to have it... but rules are rules
Now I wonder what she'll come up with? I am not entirely sure this wannabe "American-R&B" thing will work out fine, and I'll miss the ethno and probably she'll drop the Ukrainian aswell... we'll see when we get the final song... I'm not super hopeful but I could be happily surprised
Illaria : Illaria is a great artist, actually one of the better ones in Ukraine, I love her authentic and original ethno-inspired style and vocals but unfortunately her previous attempts for ESC weren't true to her own style and both attempts were let-downs (in particular the meh 2017 entry). If she'll stay true to herself this time around, she could be a hot contender, preferably with an ethno-ballad in Ukrainian, maybe something like
Vilna or
De ty, but she could work also in
uptempo. Question is, will she stay true to herself or will she once again make misguided choices? Illaria in English and something that compromises her sound do not work well, so I hope she learned from the past.
KAZKA : Newcomer act to look out for, they topped my personal "most played tracks on Spotify"-list last year with the super cool
Svyata and so far they have the only (to me) known entry
Dyva, which is also pretty cool. If Tayanna and Illaria disappoints, I'm all for KAZKA winning this. This is modern and fresh, yet has a local elements to it.
Laud are pretty new to me, but if the entry would be anything like
U tsyu nich, then this could be a pretty cool think. Same goes for
Dilemma and
Serhiy Babkin, if they'd enter something as good as the linked songs... I'm here for it! , also
Kozak System could be promising...
As for returners
Melovin,
Pur
ur and
Kadnay, they better bring something good since I didn't like any of their previous attempt,
Melovin I remember as a real horror, an amateur tween-Idol Bieber wannabe trying to act all "cool" but failing big time... yuck
The rest of the acts I know nothing about so we'll see... but it seems this selection could be a pretty strong one...
They f*cked X Factor to bits and I expected a better entry from them. 
