Montenegro

Just Get Out Of My Life Andrea

"Everybody's talkin' 'bout all the things I'm missin'..."

Try to pass yourself off as something you're not at Eurovision and people will almost always see through you. Whether it's an unexpected switch in style, language or performance, the audience tends to frown on any entry designed to tick all of the contest's boxes unless it does it with equally unexpected panache. This year's entry from Montenegro - bearing the double-edged title Just Get Out Of My Life - does not, and is as complete an about-face as you could imagine.

After following up their solid but uneventful debut with just as solid but just as old-fashioned an opener to last year's contest, the Montenegrin delegation would seem to have taken their lead from similarly hopeless and even more pint-sized Andorra in abandoning their language, bypassing their own song-writing talent and shipping in a team of foreigners to save them from semi-final ignominy. (And look what became of Casanova.) Aligning themselves with and masquerading as composers and lyricists from schlager powerhouses Sweden and Spain, German stalwarts Ralph Siegel and Bernd Meinunger return to Eurovision with another entry from their catalogue of cheesy pop, this time for a country they clearly have no affiliation with. The mathematical approach they take to composing and lyric-penning might see Montenegro challenging Slovenia for the title of trashiest Balkan nation at ESC (I don't count Romania, whatever Elena Gheorghe might claim) if it weren't so incongruous and didn't smack of desperation.

In a concession to the rule requiring some sort of national flavour in an entry, Just Get Out Of My Life is being fronted by the striking, home-grown Andrea. Hitherto unheard by and unknown to the wider European public - but touted by many from the former Yugoslavia as someone to watch (and indeed as a good singer) - her ability to sell the song vocally and in terms of performance on the night will be almost entirely responsible for securing any chance it may have of qualifying. The song's been-there-done-that quality is unlikely to sit well with more demanding televoters, so however spunky Ms Demirović is she may yet have to rely on the OGAE jury vote which was perceived to have plucked Sweden from the jaws of disaster in the 2nd semi last year.

'Convincing' is the key word with Just Get Out Of My Life. Where its uncomplicated pop may fail to win most televoters over, its performer may just have the wherewithal to make the song the frothy, flag-waving, zoomaholic opener the semi needs. My feeling is that it won't, precisely because it's Montenegro trying to do what other countries have been doing, often better, for a long time in this contest, and I expect the audience will see it. I don't begrudge them searching for their niche, but I don't think they've found it with this entry.