Serbia

Oro Jelena Tomašević featuring Bora Dugić

Apart from the convenience of probably not having to travel very far to get to the venue, there are in all likelihood many other good things about representing your country on home soil at Eurovision. One in particular is the fact that whether or not you have a song or give a performance that warrants it, national pride and a sense of duty will drive the partisan audience in the arena wild for both and make your entry seem, for a few brief seconds before the director cues the next postcard, like the most amazing entry the contest has ever seen. In some cases this is deserved, and even when it's not – with the likes of, say, the mediocre Latvian entry in 2003 – the enthusiasm is so infectious that it is simpler just to go along with it. Until the groundswell of emotion subsides a song can be the greatest triumph of style over substance you've ever seen and you will still be swept along by it. Particularly if it is as superficially grand and sweeping as Oro.

Representing what is presumably the final work in Željko Joksimović's Eurovision triptych, Oro aspires to be its central panel, flanked by Lane Moje and Lejla as two lesser but related works. If its import is to be measured in the poetic obscurity of its lyrics it certainly outdoes both, without really saying anything more than either. Combined with the slightly forced enormity of the composition, it leaves you with the sense that it is being wilfully po-faced, and more than a little condescending. The fact that it takes itself so seriously goes beyond admirable to off-putting, which is a great shame, as there is a lot to otherwise like about it. As might be expected, the arrangement is layered and as rich as the vocals that accompany it from Jelena Tomašević, which have both the power and the fragility they need to make the part she is playing in the story convincing and for her to speak to her audience. That though is Oro's problem: whereas Molitva was largely straightforward, it is more round-about, almost to the point of being manipulative.

The strings of the crowd in the hall are nevertheless much easier to pull than those of the televoters on the other side of the screen, and though they might acknowledge the hosts' effort with the faint praise of a shrug and a “that was alright”, they won't necessarily vote for it just because 20,000 elated fans make it look as though they should. At the end of the day their entry remains one among many and will be judged on its own merits. In Oro's case they are there for all to see, but mostly because they are so crassly signposted. Serbia has given us 2008's Big Balkan Ballad, but it lacks the modesty that make its nearest equivalents – last year's Bosnian entry Rijeka Bez Imena and this year's Albanian entry Zemrën E Lamë Peng – so much more effective. It will earn enough support in the region and from its people elsewhere on the continent to ensure that it does better than Finland did in Helsinki, but unless Jelena can add a touch of humility to it I don't see it pulling in the points from the rest of Europe that it would need to bring the country a second consecutive victory, or even trouble the top five. Nono way, nono nono nono nono nono way.