The Czech Republic’s national final is a great entry point for those who haven’t dipped their toes into this part of the Eurovision season but want to give it a go. The Czechs keep it simple, with seven entries, and a voting system where 25% of the points come from the “international jury”, which includes you! Anyone can vote for their favourite entry through the website or via the official Eurovision app if you have that installed. This kind of interaction with the fandom hasn’t yet resulted in anything close to a win for the Czech Republic, but it’s a good formula that should reap dividends at some point.

In any case, I’ll review this year’s seven entries across the next three days, given that when the winner is announced on the 15th I’ll probably be asleep due to the time difference between central Europe as the east coast of Australia. Hence, my initial review of the Czech entry will have to wait for the 16th before I turn to the Albanian national final.

We Are Domi — “Lights Off”
There’s nothing wrong with this song as such — it ticks a lot of boxes for the kind of the track that could at least make it to the final of the song contest. It is EDM with heavy beats and some nice builds and drops when you’d expect them, which is also it’s greatest weakness in my opinion. There’s just nothing that is surprising once you realise what kind of song this is — it becomes predictable after the first minute or so. The sugar rush I got from the first listen wore off quickly.

Giudi — “Jezinky”
Not so much a song as a meandering three-minute art project, this certainly delivers in spades where atmosphere and vocal harmonies are concerned. I’m not a fan of ASMR, so my hackles were already up in the first few seconds of this track, and while I’m sure Giudi would deliver a mesmerising performance on stage, I can’t help but think this would be a good interval act rather than a competitive entry.

Annabelle — “Runnin’ Out of Freakin’ Time”
Pro-tip: Eurovision doesn’t tolerate swearing, so maybe you shouldn’t have f-bombs at the centre of your entry? “Freaking” just doesn’t have the same impact; “effing” would have sounded better given the need to compromise. That aside, I quite like this effort at punk-pop revival, even though it’s fairly cookie-cutter for the most part. In my opinion this year’s batch of songs are relatively weak, but this one at least kept me engaged throughout.