Eurovision 2019 spotlight: Belarus' ZENA with "Like It"...

The annual Eurovision Song Contest officially gets underway in Tel Aviv, Israel, in the second week of May, but it's been a busy busy past few months, with the 42 countries taking part (now 41) either holding their national competitions or rolling out their preselected entries to the yearly music phenomenon that has been going on continuously since 1956. There has been controversy (Ukraine dramatically pulled out of the show after trying to enforce crazy stipulations on the winner of their national final, Maruv, who would've been one of the favorites going in), as well as surprising results (Denmark overlooked their grand Greenlandic duet for a cheesy love ditty), but this is proving to be one of the most competitive years in the history of the program. During April and leading to May I'll go over the entries one by one with my take on them, and their chances of winning either the music juries or the Public televote to claim the trophy that ABBA did back in 1974.

Belarus - "Like It" by ZENA (Зена)

Singer Zinaida Kupriyanovich hails from the Eastern European country's capital of Minsk, where she tried for the Junior version of the event a couple times to no avail. She did win the national competition to head to Tel Aviv, and I do say I was kind of surprised. "Like It" is such a generic dance track, and her live performance was so weak (at the semi's her backup singers looked lost) that I was shock it won over some of the other choices. Nevertheless, the song has since gotten at least a sonic production revamp that does put some meat on this track (the minor chords on the bridge are a plus), but that won't matter when it comes to a live performance on stage in Israel. After last year's visually stunning performance by Alexeev on "Forever", which didn't make it out of the semi-finals, I'm sure they didn't know what to do, but this lyrically-slight song may be good for a car mixtape, but definitely is too simple for here. And with going on first in the first half of the first semi's (with most of the former Russian Republics save Estonia in the second semi), she's pretty much doomed to remain behind the pack. (Rating 3/10)

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The country has been competing since 2004, and their best showing has been sixth place in the final in 2007 with "Work Your Magic" from Dmitry Koldun...

That was delightfully cheesy, but my favorite from Belarus so far was "Story Of My Life" from the duo NAVIBAND from 2017, with their earnest indie-folk like a Slavic 10,000 Maniacs...