Friday 12 February 2010

Armenia chooses: Emmy & Mihran vs Eva Rivas for Eurovision 2010

UPDATE 14 Feb 2010
Eva Rivas will represent Armenia at Eurovision 2010 with Apricot Stone. (see also comments section below)
***
This Sunday 14 February, Armenia will make its choice as to who will represent the country in Eurovision 2010. You may listen to the songs of all 9 contenders here. It’s now clear that the choice is between Emmy & Mihran vs Eva Rivas.

Interestingly, if until last couple of weeks, no one had doubts that Emmy & Mihran will win our national selection, current ‘word of mouth’ favourite is Eva Rivas.

Overall, I am not impressed with this year’s choices on offer. I simply cannot see a winner song - a Eurovision winner song - among candidates. Whoever wins this coming Sunday, may struggle reaching the top ten at Eurovision, unless put on a great show...

I was really looking forward to Emmy/Mihran’s song. There was anticipation and good buzz surrounding it. However, I am not impressed, perhaps partly because I am not really into that kind of music. But regardless my musical genre preferences, it sounds similar to many other Eurovision tunes. It does not stand out. On the other hand, it’s a song you can dance in clubs; there are some catchy tunes there. And yes, both Emmy and Mihran are cuties ;) Emmy’s resemblance to Sirusho, and Mihran’s dancing experience with Madonna may certainly help for publicity purposes. Videos of support by famous personalities, like Ricky Martin and Ken Davitian are smart moves too.

Eva Rivas’s song is classier. I first heard of Eva when she performed Sayat Nova’s Tamam Ashkar which I think was a brilliant modern interpretation of the classic. The current choice of Apricot Stone is OKish but... I do not think it uses Eva’s voice to its full ability. Also, I do not think the frequent use of “motherland” word is necessarily a cool or appealing concept for Eurovision fans. She looks stunning though, as always. Appearance-wise, she somehow reminds me of Angelina Jolie.

I won’t be reviewing other choices on offer as I do not see them suitable for Eurovision or suitable at all. I must, however, say that Razmik Amyan’s song is the worst one. I mean, it’s really bad. Could not force myself to hear it till the end. Sorry, Razmik.

As it’s always happening around time of Eurovision related events, number of visits to my (directly or indirectly) Eurovision related posts surges substantially.

“Eva Rivas” is currently No. 1 keyword people search over the Internet to visit my blog. It pushed “gay armenia” keyword to the 2nd place. WOW (!). And it’s all because of one post I made back in November of Sayat Nova’s Tamam Ashkhar new video clip by Eva Rivas. Out of interest, I did search “Eva Rivas” on Google, and that particular blog post of mine came out on the first page of Google’s search results for “Eva Rivas”. Not bad :)

*pictures - via Facebook fan pages

12 comments:

Ramon said...

Just PLEASE don't the song by The Netherlands any serious. The entire country is totally embarrassed by this song and singer!

artmika said...

So, here we are. Eva Rivas will represent Armenia at Eurovision 2010. I have to say, show-wise (stage presentation) Emmy & Mihran were the best during the national selection night. However, although both Emmy and Mihran looked cute, Emmy’s voce sounded very bad, Mihran could have done much better without her.

As to Eva, she provided with OKish performance, her voice was much better than Emmy’s.

Now my advice to Eva & producers. You have to seriously think of presenting a better show for Eurovision. Otherwise, not even win, but top ten would be our of reach. Eva should learn to move on the stage, she did not feel the stage and there were lots of awkward movements. She should choose different dress and different haircut.

In fact, I stand 100% with the commentary I provided writing this post. Choices of songs were not impressive. There were no winner songs there. But Eva’s win was RELATIVELY deserved. It was RELATIVELY better than the other ones.

Good luck, Eva.

artmika said...

I recommend reading this great roundup by Global Voices:

Armenia: Eurovision National Competition

Anonymous said...

She looks like Anjelina? Lilit thinks SHE looks like Anjelina ;-)

http://bsw-am.livejournal.com/54265.html

artmika said...

No election in Armenia passes without controversy, even if its for Eurovision.

Emmy & Mihran team representatives allege sms vote rigging during Armenia Eurovision selection and do not exclude the possibility of court proceeding...

Unknown said...

I like Emmy's style, she always stands out. And it is a question if Mihran would do better alone, or Emmy. I think Mihran should have only said aha-aha-aha, and danced, the rest Emmy would've done much better. But the song was not the best she has performed during her career. That's why Eva Rivas had a chance. When I read the choices, even without listening to the songs I said Emmy, and whoever is with her, since she is the only Armenian young singer who looks young, dresses young, performs young... And don't give me "she looks like Sirusho" or "her singing is comparable to Sirusho" shit, because Sirusho is nothing than a result of a good PR, that's all, she doesn't have good voice. Given the selection of the songs, however, I think without any controversy one could say that Eva was a good choice. I myself changed my opinion as to who should go to Eurovision. She is beautiful, the song is catchy, and that's the most important factor for eurovision. THERE IS NO QUALITY in eurovision, but since us - Armenians, take it very seriously, we should think this way: people will hear this song and say hey, what was that song? apricot stone? and that beautiful girl was singing that , lets vote for them! But the organizers need to work on the performance really hard... It was reaaaalllyyy awkward... If she cannot dance, or move ( BTW Sirusho couldn't either, she was just moving her hips from left to right), there should be a few dancers around her with a well thought choreography, and everything will be perfect! For eurovision:)

Anonymous said...

Hello :) if u check here
http://escdaily.com/news/4784/

she say in interview:

Is the stage show finalised? Can you tell us anything about it?

Eva Rivas: We have prepared very many surprises during the contest of Eurovision which we will present in Oslo if my song wins during the selection. As for the national selection round, the accent here is laid on the song.

So she only plan to sing the song well and make it nice for Eurovision will be better :)

Feel free to post this interview
-Renee

artmika said...

This is by far the most scandalous Eurovision in Armenia's history. Emmy & Mihran went public today (and we all knew about that "promise", don't we?): 'Armenia Public TV betrayed us', "promised" victory

(MaxLiberty - RFE/RL - in Armenian)

me said...

just so we are clear, H1 does not have an obligation to hold a contest. They just choose to each year for god knows what reason (sort of like any "election" in Armenia). For example, the year Sirusho went, there was no contest, and the audience only got to pick the song.

Apparently, Emmy and Mihran were promised a similar setup and they recorded 4 different songs in LA to be chosen via text messages. Of course they were lied to and H1, at the last minute, decided to hold a contest after all. We are only left to guess who has such a power over H1. This country sometimes...they can't even let something as silly as Eurovision pass by without conflict.

artmika said...

Major fail for Armenia in Eurovision. Emmy was robbed of her Eurovision song

artmika said...

Cute Emmy + hot Greek dancers. Things started looking better for Armenia in Eurovision

artmika said...

For the first time ever... Armenia is OUT of Eurovision final. Failure that I warned you about...