Romania

Pe-o Margine De Lume Nico & Vlad

Eurovision by its very nature leaves itself open to allegations of identity theft. A contest that basically requires those taking part in it to come up with something an audience will be familiar and/or comfortable with in order to win means accusations of unoriginality are levelled at the majority of entries every year. Taken to its extreme this manifests itself in the frenzy of plagiarism slander of the national final season, which is almost always baseless. Nevertheless, like a watchdog with a bone, there is a subclass of fan who will monitor every aspect of the songs in competition and ruthlessly expose any breach of regulations. One of the countries plagued by both in recent years has been Romania, albeit generally on technical points. While the songs they do eventually send to the contest have by and large gone unscathed in the "that's a blatant copy of blah blah" stakes, they represent a more cunning form of larceny: Romania has become the new Italy.

Pe-o Margine De Lume marks the third consecutive entry from the country with lyrics in Italian. Fair dos, the few lines delivered in the language in the hotchpotch of tongues that was 2007's Liubi, Liubi, I Love You were unremarkable compared to 2006's Tornerò, but a pattern is clearly emerging. Whether it is a simple attraction to the language or some strange sense of responsibility for making it heard, Romania is taken with Italian. And quite right, too: it rarely if ever fails to work when set to music, and sounds as good here as anywhere. Of course, the song also marks two countries in a row that will be returning to their linguistic roots for the first time in a decade in Belgrade: the Italian is twinned with Romanian, and the marriage of the romance languages is a harmonious one.

Less balanced perhaps is the picture presented by the newlyweds brought together for the song. While many a fan would happily consummate the nuptials with Vlad Miriţă, Nico tends to come across both visually and vocally as the rich dowager who's hired herself a beefy young escort for the night (not that there's anything wrong with that). In a way though it works in their favour: Vlad's powerful tenor delivery is offset by a sense of fragility in Nico's, and the blend of their voices is actually quite successful. Besides, we need look no further than 2002 for proof that a superficially mismatched couple can deliver a song like this with more conviction, and more convincingly, than you might expect.

The similarities to Tell Me Why don't merely amount to the duo performing the song, needless to say. Pe-o Margine De Lume is another straightforward ballad from Romania, well-structured, with some neat and effective orchestration. It doesn't try to push the envelope, but at the same time it doesn't present itself as anything other than what it is. Even if it weren't in the same semi-final as Moldova, San Marino and Spain (three countries you would think were sure to send double figures its way) its lack of ostentation ought to see it picking up points left, right and centre. The contrast with the Finnish entry won't do it any harm either, so I am fairly certain we will be seeing it in the final - its rightful place, some might say, as Italy by any other name.