ESTONIA SECOND SEMI-FINAL
Karl-Kristjan & Karl Killing ft WATEVA - "Young"
A fairly upbeat effort from the Karls, imploring the audience to stay young at heart backed by the now-ubiquitous tropical house sound. Falls short of being an earworm, although could do well if it gets enough air time in advance of the domestic final and the contest itself.
QUALIFIED FOR THE ESTONIAN FINAL
Although the good people of Estonia liked this one, I just can’t get behind it, and I’d be pretty surprised if it somehow made it through to Lisbon! The song is too slow without sufficient intensity to carry it through, and the somewhat lazy songwriter appears to have filled half the song with whoa-whoa-whoas and dah-dah-dahs, which is disappointing. A no from me.
QUALIFIED FOR THE ESTONIAN FINAL
Frankie Animal - "(Can't keep calling) Misty"
A sophisticated adult contemporary number from… a band! Not often you see one of those around these parts! I quite liked this one, which had low-lit moody staging on the night of the second domestic semi-final. This has a decent chance to represent Estonia in Lisbon, but similar to some of the entries which Belgium has sent in recent years, I wonder if it will lack the broad appeal required for the contest.
QUALIFIED FOR THE ESTONIAN FINAL
Evestus - "Welcome to my world"
Describing themselves as an electro-industrial rock band, Evestus are certainly different fare! I can’t say I particularly loved this one to be honest, and can’t see it making it through to the next stage. To paraphrase Hansel in the 2001 classic Zoolander, I don't really listen to Evestus’ music, but the fact that they’re making it, I respect that.
QUALIFIED FOR THE ESTONIAN FINAL
Eliis Pärna & Gerli Padar - "Sky"
I’m not a huge fan of ballads at the best of time, but they can work when there’s enough drive and variation, which admittedly can be quite difficult in only three minutes. Although having this song as a duet with Eliis and Gerli certainly adds more than having a single singer, neither is particularly different from the other and the song doesn’t really seem to go anywhere – if you’ve heard the first minute, you’ve heard the whole thing.
QUALIFIED FOR THE ESTONIAN FINAL
Marju Länik - “Täna otsuseid ei tee”
This retro-sounding pop song gets bonus points for being sung in Estonian in an age where only the French and Spanish seem to sing in their own languages. However it needed more than that, and it’s easy to see how this one didn’t make it through.
BETTER LUCK NEXT YEAR
Rolf Roosalu - “Show A Little Love”
Good on Rolf for giving this upbeat number a shot. Unfortunately the glitter wasn’t enough to save this one, which could have used more active staging (perhaps some dancing from Rolf?), but at least he looked like he was having fun with it.
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Nothing particularly remarkable about this middling pop song I’m afraid, but the link is worth checking out for the bizarre staging. My Estonian isn’t what it could be, so I’m not sure whether the lyrics of Tempel warrant what takes place on stage, but the various extras coming on to mess up Indrek’s hair, cut his tshirt off him and so on were very popular with the live audience, even if that wasn’t reflected in the result.
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Again, good to see plenty of different genres represented in Eesti Laul 2018, but unless you’re a huge fan of Estonian rap this one may not be for you.
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Girls In Pearls - “Spellbound”
A very polished pop-duet from the near-lookalike Girls In Pearls, and probably unlucky to miss out on making it through to the domestic final. As with Frankie Animal’s song, it might have been too low-key to do well in the contest itself, but a pretty decent song which I’m sure they hoped would do better.
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