Time for me to review last year's Croatian entry
Nina Kraljić - Lighthouse
Status: Very good effort
Song: Croatia is part of those underrated countries whose efforts would have deserved more recognition imo. Actually, since I started following the contest in 2009, Croatia made it to my personal top 10 three times (2009, 2010, 2012): to me they nailed their ballads this decade. I won't comment much on the infamous "Celebrate" (2011) - which is worth of memes and lolz - and "Mižerja" (2013), which sadly didn't work for me, despite the fact I was originally thrilled to hear a form of klapa music at Eurovision.
After their 2-year break, I absolutely didn't know what to expect from them, other than that they would probably sing in English, to my great regret. :? I first discovered "Lighthouse" during the first semi final and I must say I wasn't disappointed. I had previously listened to "Zaljuljali Smo Svijet", which was promising, and I'm glad they went for an entry that reflected what the artist's style was like at national level, it is annoying when artists with great artistic universes come up with songs that don't have anything to do with their usual material simply to fit with what they think is the "Eurovision format". Anyway, the song title in itself - "Lighthouse" - sounded great to me, the lyrics are logically filled with words from the lexical field of the sea. It's cute, well put together and it can either be understood literally - as the story of someone going to sea - or metaphorically as a message of hope anyone can relate to. I would choose this over metaphors about stars - way too often used in Eurovision songs - anytime.
Musically, the song is also interesting; it's not because Croatia sends a ballad that it's supposed to have a Balkan sound to it! It starts with a flute and arrangements that are reminiscent of traditional Asian music (Japan comes to my mind especially): I would not venture to name the instruments used there but the melody, the ethnic beat and overall atmosphere sound definitely Asian to me. Which is great and fresh! Nina has a special voice and a particular way of singing, yet she excels perfectly at this genre; the melodic lines were arranged so that her voice could be highlighted: the sorts of stylized ends of sentences she does ("saving shoooore", "evermooore") are so unique and add character to the song. The first chorus comes with a "quiet" first part in line with the first verse: there, the faster pace and high-pitched notes are - with the stylized "Lighthouse" line sung right after that - the best hooks the song could have had imo. Then the second part gets stronger instrumentation-wise and the "Lighthouse" hooks are interspersed with sustained notes, allowing Nina to play with the main melody. Nothing major to say about the second verse - shorter than the first one - since the arrangements are the same. The second chorus, though, was given a much more powerful start with belted notes, slight vocal variations and the strong instrumentation that was used previously. I think that - from this moment on - we leave the "Asian" flavour for a somewhat Irish one. The backing voices singing in canon give the depth needed at this stage of the song. And then... what? A key change!
An actual key change for the final chorus.
The culmination of the song to me is when Nina sings the last short stylized "Lighthouse" lines, as a way to nicely mark the end of it and make that hook stuck in people's heads. To sum up, overall I think that was a strong song with a strategic musical bias (the ethnic/traditional feel), a remarkable voice, great hooks and nice lyrics, even though I wish it were in Croatian (because Croatian is LIFE guys!
). My only criticism is that I feel there is something missing to call it totally great. I can't really put my finger on it, but is it the fact the song doesn't have a bridge to break the pace past the second chorus? Is it the key change that imo makes the song sound more Eurovision-y than I would have liked to? I don't know, but it made me realize that - although "Lighthouse" was objectively the Croatian effort with the most potential to do well - I still find myself preferring "Lijepa Tena", "Lako Je Sve" and "Nebo".
Don't judge me, I can't help it.
Voice: Nina has got both a characteristic voice and singing technique. It may not appeal to everyone (see Maraaya), but she sure added a lot of personality to the song, which in turn highlighted her voice. Live-wise, Nina can sing but her voice was more "fragile" then I thought it would be. She nailed it in the semi, but unfortunately gave an underwhelming rendition in the grand final. It wasn't a disaster, but her vocals have been borderline off a handful of times. I get she had a lot of pressure, she was probably tired as hell and stuff - but the vocal level on the night was really good, which inevitably made Croatia one of the weakest acts live of the grand final to me (with Azerbaijan and France).
Staging: Aw, what a disappointment!
With such a song and such lyrics, there were so many options for staging! They preferred going the sober route, fair enough, still I think it was too basic to do the song justice. The performance started with Nina standing behind a microphone stand and wearing a sort of giant white translucent poncho with black dots, lines and ornamental patterns (resembling tree branches), as well as a black collar adorned with ribbons (?). The stage was bathed in blue: blue lights were pointing at the camera and the background looked like a night sky. As I am re-watching the semi 1 performance, I hadn't notice the minor fail from SVT until now... The flag and name of the country appeared on the floor for a few seconds at the beginning!
WTH?
Anyway, moving on! As the cameras moved around, one might have noticed waves on the floor, while white lights were surrounding the stage. When the first chorus started, Nina moved her arms to make her poncho flutter. Then two hooded men dressed in black came to take it off, so that we could see her... dress... :? It seemed to be a long white shiny dress with intricate patterns all over it and lots of puffed-out embellishments. Honestly, the dress would not have looked that bad had there not been those long and cumbersome pieces of cloth on her arms. :? And to make it really work, I would have reflected on a play of light so that the shiny facets of the dress would have actually made Nina look like an actual lighthouse, not a "has-been Las Vegas show stripper", as someone said.
Ideally, Nina would have been allowed to wear any of the outfits she wore during the Eurovision week as she is a fashion lover, her avant-garde style wouldn't have been "off-topic" imo. I see their point was to make Nina stand out visually compared with the rest of the stage, but the thing is that 1) the background was so dark one could hardly see the waves move and 2) it certainly made people focus on that questionable dress even more.
The rest of the chorus was nothing more than large camera angles and some sets of white lights moving: nothing that interesting. During the second verse, no changes apart from the presence of four hooded people/backing vocalists next to Nina (I loved her "chiseled" hairstyle by the way!
). The stage then turned orange (!) when the key change occurred, which was really random and ineffective if you ask me. :? To sum up: so much potential wasted! Nothing really happened on stage apart from the change of outfit. They still could have kept it simple while making good use of the lights (a smart play of
light for "
Lighthouse" should have been the very basis of the performance) and LED floor, that was nowhere to be seen there. The outfit was not looking good and the background was way too dark. Pity!
Outcome: Croatia eventually qualified for the final and placed 23rd (boo!) as juries ranked them 22nd and televoters ranked them 19th... Well, that's very low, even for a meh final live performance!
I'm surprised because I truly thought it would appeal to a wide audience. I guess since she was performing between Lithuania (that made an overall convincing staging) and Russia (that was the most attention-whore-ish act of the year visually), it would have been impossible to be memorable enough with such a lacklustre presentation. Still, the result was really severe imo: the points of the televote only came from neighbours. What the hell? :? I'm glad they qualified though, it was tight!
In my personal ranking, "Lighthouse" went from third place (when I started to rank songs) to 11th place, so Croatia ended up staying at the gates of my top 10 due to the lacking element I was talking about earlier. It was a very good song from Croatia, but I still prefer their past ballads in Croatian. Good luck to you guys in Kyiv
there have been some nervous breakdowns in the new thread already - I myself am not sure of what to expect from HRT this time - but as long as nothing has been officially announced, we could still be positively surprised!
Fingers crossed!
Well done Nina!
