Poland

I Don't Wanna Leave Lidia Kopania

"Don't you know this is meant to be..."

It's no fun being an outsider at the best of times, but it's got to be a frustrating experience in something as ruthless as Eurovision. Lonely, too, trying to fit in as best you can and being consistently shunned, until you just tag along for the sake of it or give up altogether. Not many countries fit into this category, and even some of them that do boast at least one result in the televoting era to mitigate their otherwise overlooked contribution to the contest. With Poland, if we're honest, that's been largely hit and miss: the country seems to have struggled to adjust to the demands of pleasing the audience rather than a bunch of juries, with nary a mark made on the upper reaches of the scoreboard since their (almost) all-conquering debut in 1994. They will be hoping to reverse their meagre fortunes in Moscow with the lovely Lidia Kopania and her big ballad I Don't Wanna Leave, but all the indications are that they'll be out of there by Friday morning.

Which is not a reflection on the song itself, as such. Poland has always stood out as perhaps the hardest done-by Eastern country in the contest, with very little support being shown to it even by its nearest and dearest. Under the current split semi system the hole they have to claw their way out of - while many others are still being given a helping hand - is all the deeper. They managed to last year, with the not entirely dissimilar For Life, but having gotten that far fell straight back in again, ending joint last with a handful of points thrown their way by the diaspora alone. Making the final is no small achievement, but they would have been expecting more, and will so again in Moscow. The problem they face is in getting there to start with; as nice as I Don't Wanna Leave is, there's no escaping the fact that it's horribly easy to overlook.

This is unfortunate, if not ironic, since the song stood out in its national final (to me at any rate) as the obvious choice. But the transition from its cosy local setting to the European stage robs it of much of the power it has, especially given its draw and followed by the overall favourite for victory. It doesn't help that Ms Kopania has yet to give anything other than a merely competent performance of the song; the ballad I Don't Wanna Leave is requires more to truly sell it than she appears capable of delivering. Mind you, that's what I said about the Cypriot entry in 2006, and look at the power Annet Artani poured into that. (She had fantastic gospel-lite backing vocalists though, which is what Poland desperately needs this year.)

But the fact that Why Angels Cry fared so poorly, despite the vocal wonders worked on it, in front of what was the nearest thing to a home crowd Cyprus has ever had at Eurovision, doesn't bode well for the Polish entry. I Don't Wanna Leave might not have the same imperious anthem pretentions, but its narrower focus might not help either. It's in a bugger of a semi-final to qualify from when you're on the outer pretty much every way you look at it, so I expect Lidia and the delegation will be having to make their farewells well before the final. They might not want to leave, but the televoters and juries might not give them any choice.