Bermudu Divstūris — “Bad”
The chorus is catchy, but that’s where the good bits end for this song, which surely must be a tongue-in-cheek entry? I don’t think you can start your song with “I wanna get drunk / I wanna get high / I wanna make love with you tonight / ‘Cause I’m bad (x3) / Awesome!” and expect to be taken seriously. Regrettably, not only do they return to this dreadful opening salvo, but they double-down with a spoken word section with “Oh my God / Look at that / The boys from Latvia / We bad”. And I’ll repeat: the chorus is pretty good! But it really doesn’t offer enough comfort from everything else in the song.

Bujāns — “He, She, You and Me”
Did I enter a time warp before pressing play on this song? It’s like I’m back in the mid-to-late 1990s when big techno beats were occasionally enough to excuse nonsensical lyrics. Not sure it works for this group, even though as someone who was a teenager when this music ruled the airwaves, it’s certainly a blast from the past. The beats might be enough to fill a dance floor, but the overall production feels unfinished, and I think the chorus of “he, she, you and me — we are one big family” needs some explaining, unless it’s referring back to the 1990s theme of humanity being united by dance, in which case this really is a throwback!