Eurovision 2019 spotlight: Poland's Tulia with "Fire Of Love (Pali się)"...

I'm moving on with my spotlight on the songs and countries competing at the Eurovision Song Contest this year in Tel Aviv, Israel. If you want to catch up with the series so far, you can click here for it...

Going through the running order of the first semi-final, we come to the entry from Poland this year. Last year, the nation surprised a lot of people by not qualifying for the final with their radio-friendly but very bland "Light Me Up" from DJ Gromee featuring Swedish singer Lukas Meijer. This time out, the broadcasting agent for Eurovision in the country, TVP, took back the selection for themselves, and moved as far away from EDM as they could get...

Poland - "Fire of Love (Pali się)" by Tulia

So, when I found out about the group representing Poland this year, one of the sites had described their style of singing as "white music". Now I cannot find any English-language description of this, but what I can say is this is an odd and very polarizing choice. Like a slavic Bananarama, the group of four women from the coastal city of Szczecin sing not in harmony but as one, making the resulting sound seem quite a bit shouty. And despite their viral video cover of Depeche Mode's "Enjoy The Silence", which got them noticed rightfully for its eerie, haunting quality, the off-kilter guitar progression tries to "punk" this up and ends up just feeling disjointed. A black-and-white music video that's supposedly inspired by Cold War, a depressing-ass movie as it is, doesn't really help the comprehension of what's going on either in the song or the clip, and the insertion of English lyrics even makes it worse...

I have to give credit for the country giving a chance for such a left-field entry that apparently incorporates ethnic touches from their homeland. They've been spending years sending in schmaltzy ballads, so this is just as daring as Iceland's is (maybe with different results). And in such a weak semi, anything could happen (though such an early placing doesn't help). But the more I listen to this, it doesn't get any more acreage in my brain, and I think besides the Polish public (who can't vote for their own), their closest neighbors to be able to vote in this semi are the Czech Republic and Belarus. (Rating 3/10)

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Poland has been competing in Eurovision since 1994, with four years sitting out the contest. They've made the finals top ten three times, but what's extra surprising is their best showing is their first, when in 1994 singer Edyta Górniak claimed second place with "To Nie Ja!" ("It Wasn't Me")...

But my personal favorite of their entries was from 2015, when Michal Szpak brought his Thriller jacket and huge voice for "Color Of Your Life", which came in at 8th...