Poland POLAND 2021 - RAFAŁ - The Ride

[escYOUnited]

Lights, beaming down the rainy street
All the faces that I meet tell me I'm wrong
Ride, staring at the neon signs
Making up a storyline, gotta hold on
Not lost, even in the death of night
I can make it out alright
Just let me go
Yeah, I, I will make it through somehow
Let me figure out what is in and out

So baby, hold on for the ride of your life
High above ground, living it now
I'm gonna take you to the end of the line
Taking that fight, make it alright
It doesn't matter if I stumble and fall
I'll make it through, I'll never touch the ground
So baby, hold on for the ride of your life
Hold on real tight, make it alright

Hard, I won't give my heart and soul
I am going for the glow, no looking back
I'm gonna rise high up in the atmosphere
I ain't got no time to fear
Follow my tracks

Not lost, following the neon lights
Shooting through the summer skies
Just let me go
Yeah I, I will make it through somehow
Let me figure out what is in and out

So baby, hold on for the ride of your life
High above ground, living it now
I'm gonna take you to the end of the line
Taking that fight, make it alright
It doesn't matter if I stumble and fall
I'll make it through, I'll never touch the ground
So baby, hold on for the ride of your life
Hold on real tight, make it alright

I'm gonna take all the world tonight (Oh-woah-oh-oh)
Not gonna ask, gonna take what's mine (Oh-woah-oh-oh)
So hold on tight, baby, let's get high (Oh-woah-oh-oh)
High above the ground
Ride, staring at the neon signs
Let me figure out what is in and out

So baby, hold on for the ride of your life
High above ground, living it now
I'm gonna take you to the end of the line
Taking that fight, make it alright
It doesn't matter if I stumble and fall
I'll make it through, I'll never touch the ground
So baby, hold on for the ride of your life
Hold on real tight, make it alright​

 

[Chorizo]

When watching the music video it became apparent to me that this is a really cool song because the singer is wearing sunglasses at night and there is lots of neon. Some parts of the song sound really good to me but maybe these parts are not long enough. Also he didn't wear sunglasses during the rehearsal leaving me confused how to rate this song now.
Since I just gave 7 points to Austria (probably just because it's my own country) I feel obliged to give this more points now.
8 points.

 

[crashworld]

Let's hope Rafal channels his inner Big Daddy energy and qualifies. I am looking forward to this performance, not gonna lie.

 

[jatojo]

It's the first time in many years that I have been cheering for a song that is not only ranked bottom in the odds, but also written by Swedes. Go Poland! No matter what happens.

 

[Fluke]

Damn, i so wanted this to qualify. Better than those 3 generic Balkan entries and Bulgaria, who all qualified. Poland's luck just ran out again....

 

[ESC94]

Oh god, this performance was so uncomfortable to watch.

 

[Ana Raquel]

another loss for TALENT

 

[burrito]

that's what happens when you're busy shouting instead of singing, not the worst performance staging-wise but it was a deserved NQ even just because of the singing or rather lack thereof

 

[tararaaam]

Now…Lipsync for your life!!! (He did, but clearly not even that was good). I liked the song, but he really didn’t do it justice.

 

[Yoozek]

 

[simonPL]

Well.

It was not good. I don't know why he screamed to the audience so many times instead of singing. Sometimes it looked like poor episode of lipsync battle.

Cringefest.
It was hard to watch it. And hard to hear it.
But I am not dissapointed, becaue this is what I expected.

Thx, bye.

 

[DenizESC]

Just quite uninspiring and messy for me

 

[burrito]

ok so here's to hoping we are going to send something better next year - maybe tvp will see that krajowe eliminacje is a must

 

[Yoozek]

Well.

It was not good. I don't know why he screamed to the audience so many times instead of singing. Sometimes it looked like poor episode of lipsync battle.

Cringefest.
It was hard to watch it. And hard to hear it.
But I am not dissapointed, becaue this is what I expected.

Thx, bye.

We told them all, didn't we. We've really tried.

 

[A-lister]

Technically I don't hate the song, it's a half-baked 80's throwback that sounds a bit demo-ish (which unfortunately many Polish entries tend to do) but still decent, but yeah the performance

 

[tararaaam]

Watching the performance again, I notice they pretty much didn’t use the backing track almost at all. Kudos for that, since many other songs were almost impossible to find the live vocal. At least Rafał passed to his backing vocalist, not his autotuned track.

 

[seagull]

I realise this is a bit odd, but I spent much of the performance distracted by the fact I found the LED grid graphics overly reminiscent of TRON the movie. It's not a particularly good sign when your attention is unintentionally drawn back to a 1980s cult film you prefer to this.

They were trying too hard to be cool from the very start. Sure, 'Empires' was a tad obvious about its themes at times, but picking something with such a throwback/retro quality to it in a Semi that also had 'Øve os på hinanden' in it probably isn't a great idea either. I guess the moral of the story is do not panic buy a song with Melodifestivalen written all over it...

 

[debemaks]

I always found the song on a mediocre-nice level... but it was clear the lack of voice that in my opinion made the performance just mediocre. I hoped but after the live ebition I really saw no chances....

 

[Franzilein]

Oof... welp, guess that ride ended in a crash

 

[Iker]

The result was NID for me. Maybe with someone other than Rafał we would sneak into the GF. I've never cared about 'The Ride' so I was not sad that we did NQ.

I'd say the amount of choreography and how much they used the stage was a positive surprise. Stage-wise much better effort than 2017 to 2019 years for me, especially 2018 was bad when it comes to that.

I got some overexcited karaoke uncle vibes out of it, lol.

I started cringing quite a lot in the latter half of our performance due to iffy vocals and Mr Brzozowski randomly screaming 'Hello Europe' or something like this with those pretty loud backing vocals on top of it.

His vocals were badly lacking (with our song not nearly as entertaining as Moldova) and it sealed the deal.

 

[Iker]

True - Rafal is in trouble, and I don't think the live performance will improve his chances much. Personally, I'm a fan of the song (in the studio version) - it's in my Top 5.

When it comes to the covid thing, there must have been errors involved, individually or in the way things were organized. Disappointing. Many international sporting events have been carried through within the last year without cases of infection.

One guy from Dadi's band got covid-19 being accomodated in the same hotel as Polish delegation. Could it be that some random hotel worker brought it in? Did they do everything in their might to prevent that? I've read some shocking stat according to which the Dutch people ... were least likely to wash their hands after exiting toilet (pre Covid though!) Kinda unexpected considering how clean their country is elsewhere, lol.