Belarus Entry: Alyona Lanskaya - Solayoh

June 03, 2013 Critic Jonni 0 Comments

Alyona Lanskaya almost represented Belarus in 2012, but it was later found out that the producers of the national selection had rigged the votes, and so she withdrew from that year, and Belarus entered with another act. This time around, the national selection in Belarus called Eurofest was done fairly, and once again Alyona Lanskaya won, maybe it was all meant to be this way. However she won by singing a song called "Rhythm Of Love", but it was changed to this song... Would the previous song had done better? Guess we'll never know. I hope she releases more songs in the future, as this is my kind of music.

"Solayoh" was written by Marc Paelinck and Martin King. It's a dance song and it's very catchy. When I was watching it during the Eurovision Song Contest 2013, my parents thought she was singing it in a different language, and then towards the end, had flipped it into English. Let's make it clear, it's all in English! I do like the song lots, and I have downloaded the song and it's remixes from iTunes, but I've heard it quite a few times now, and it becomes less catchy the more I hear it.

Belarus came 16th out of 26 countries, which is not too shabby. Alyona Lanskaya got 48 points in the Final of Eurovision 2013. She got 1 point from Lithuania, 4 points from Moldova, 2 points from Malta, 5 points from Armenia, 7 points from Azerbaijan, 1 point from Greece, 12 points from Ukraine, 5 points from Georgia, 3 points from Montenegro, 5 points from Macedonia and 3 points from Israel.

The accompanying music video fails to draw me in. It looks promising at the start when Alyona Lanskaya comes in, but then it just loses me with the dance moves, it's too static. Not only that, but she looks a lot older in this video that she did at the final of this year's contest. She's only 27, yet my guess from this video would have been mid-30s. Not a good thing at all.

This video has it all, static dancing (also performed on stage at the final), break dancing, a bar man, a beach and water behind... And when we think we've seen it all, there is Alexander Rybak (winner of the Eurovision Song Contest 2009). But where is my narrative, where is the wow factor?

Overall a song that is catchy when you first hear it, yet becomes less the more times you listen to it. The music video is too literal to the lyrics for my liking, and although looked promising from the start, fails to hold the people watching and it doesn't do much justice to the song.