Russia Entry: Dina Garipova - What If

June 06, 2013 Critic Jonni 0 Comments

Dina Garipova was a surprising entry, because compared to the other songs in the competition, this one was slow and a ballad, and it's hard to define yourself when this happens, and to make me enjoy it as well. Anouk may have sung "Birds" during the competition and stood out, but I didn't like the song, this one I did, hence why she's in my Eurovision Special and Anouk, who represented The Netherlands, isn't. Dina Garipova won Russian's version of The Voice called Golos. And then was selected internally to represent Russia. I think this girl has a big future ahead of her. Keep an eye on the name Dina Garipova, as I reckon she'll be on everyone's lips soon enough.

"What If" was written by Gabriel Alares, Joakim Björnberg and Leonid Gutkin. The song is very emotional and believable, it's one of those songs that lifts spirits up and really encourages people to believe in others too. The song made a big impact in Eurovision, but also across Europe. It even charted in the UK at number 161. But made bigger impacts on charts in other countries.

Russia got to 5th out of 26 countries and Dina Garipova got 174 points. France gave 6 points, Lithuania gave 7 points, Moldova also gave 7 points, Finland gave 2 points, Spain gave 6 points, Belgium gave 4 points, Estonia gave 12 points, Belarus gave 8 points, Germany gave 2 points, Armenia gave 7 points, the Netherlands gave 4 points, the UK gave 10 points, Sweden gave 5 points, Denmark gave 7 points, Iceland gave 1 point, Ukraine gave 4 points, Georgia gave 6 points, Ireland gave 10, Slovenia also gave 10 points, Croatia gave 6 points, Montenegro gave 7 points, Cyprus gave 5 points, Serbia gave 8 points, Latvia gave 12 points, Macedonia gave 6 points, Bulgaria gave 5 points and Israel gave 7 points.

The music video, at first, seems like a usual, expected performance piece. I was waiting to see amazing stage presence which she showed on the Eurovision Song Contest 2013. And just when she starts, we flit over to the audience. Annoying at first, until I realised they were all part of the story and she manages to uplifts them with her song, and makes them believe, not only in themselves, but in others as well.

There isn't much to this video, but there doesn't need to be, It's inspirational and that is all it needs to be. It's missing one thing that could've made this a little bit better. We could have seen the background of some of the audience members, what has brought them to this point? The point where they are sad and need to be uplifted by this song. I want to know more about the characters in the audience. It reminds me a bit of Papa Roach's "Last Resort" however even in that music video there was short snappy background profiles, and should've been more.

Overall a song that is catchy and makes you warm and fuzzy inside. The accompanying music video does the exact same thing, only missing out a few crucial details that should've been included. That is the only reason why I dropped a star, it could've been more, and I feel like they missed out on such an opportunity.

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