Inspo — “A Happy Place”
What starts off as a guitar ballad with not very much to offer most listeners fortunately builds and builds until a glorious last 30 seconds when it turns into a head-banging rock track. Sadly, this is much too late to save the song — this kind of pay off really needs to come earlier on. The line “Do you have some cash on you so we can fly away to a happy place?” is a bit odd in a world of plastic cards and so on, but that’s okay I guess. We’ve heard stranger things in this national selection.

Katō — “Promises”
Even though Kato’s voice sounds a bit fragile during the chorus, the vocal and lyrical elements of this track are strong. I like her declarations of independence and self-sufficiency. It’s the music that bothers me: too often, I feel like it washes over her vocals rather than accompanying them. There are some odd sounds that serve as distractions rather than adding to the track, including whatever’s going on in the top left-hand corner of the mix when you’re listening on headphones. There are a few unnecessary things like this which take the focus away from the song’s message and its delivery.