Bulgaria: Victoria

Some people have had really hard jobs to do over the last 12 months. Health care workers and all NHS staff providing incredible care while stretched to the limit. Teachers learning new skills in online educating while often also providing in school classes to key worker children. Bus drivers putting themselves at increased risk to ensure people can travel when needed. 

Obviously not everyone has had a hard job to do this year but, by some distance, the easiest job this year surely fell to the Bulgarian Eurovision committee. All they had to do was find a song that was in some way better than the utter yawnfest that was "Tears Getting Sober". What does it even mean for tears to get sober? I'm not looking up the lyrics to find out just in case they bore me into a coma.

For those wise enough not to play the video below, Victoria sits on a bench and sings and there is occassional lightning.

Here is some of the cutting criticism levelled at "Tears Getting Sober" by our Virtual Eurovision audience....

"Sofia so bad."
"Bullgaria"
"John Lewis ad"

Yes, this could indeed be the music from a John Lewis Christmas ad but only if the ad ended with small children weeping because Santa has mistakenly put them on the naughty list and their kitten has died.

So have Bulgaria and Victoria improved?

The answer is a resounding....maybe.....maybe not.....meh.

It's more of the same pretty unexciting stuff (although this year Victoria does stand up and walk out of a room rather than moping around on a bench the whole time). It seems to be a song about growing older and she ends up meeting and hugging her younger self (I think- I'm not watching it again). The issue I have is that Victoria must be about 12 years old so it's a bit like Marty McFly taking the DeLorean back to last Thurday.

What Bulgaria have done is raise the very important issue of whether Eurovision should have a quarter final to filter out lifeless, humdrum entries like this. The problem for Victoria is not that this is truly awful- truly awful songs demand the platform of a full Eurovision live performance so that we can all revel in and celebrate their abomination. Victoria can clearly sing but you can't make origami from a wet flannel and that appears to be the job given her with "Tears Getting Sober" and "Growing Up is Getting Old".

My main hope with this post is to have sufficiently shamed the three of my friends who expressed positive sentiments about last year's song, such that they will keep quiet this year and keep Victoria's nostalgic voyage to 2017 as their guilty pleasure.