ALBANIA 2011 - Kënga ime

Some people think that the ESC is a very limited affair, that it's a couple of days in May and that's it. Nothing could be further from the truth!! The ESC of any given year starts in November/December of the preceding year, when the first competing countries announce the participants in their national contests. If you read this blog regularly you will have seen that we here in Norway start our selections in January. In only a few days we'll have our national final. Whee!! :-D However, we are not at all the first to choose our entry. In fact I should have posted reviews of several ESC entries already ... ! :-o Better late than never, I say.

Albania traditionally select their song very early, at the venerable Festivali i Këngës. They have been sending the winner of the FiK to the ESC - LOL! :-D - since they first started participating, in 2004. The Albanian entry for Düsseldorf was selected at Christmas - yes, they are way early. :-) I can't post a video of the winner here, I can't find one on Youtube that will let me embed it, but you can go here to see it. I'm not quite sure what I think of it. I'm underwhelmed. This song is kind of like the one that is the favorite to win here on Saturday ... the chorus is good, and gets the audience going, but the verse is just ... meh. This song gets off to a really slow start, and that's generally not good. And there isn't really much of a hook to it ... I've listened to it several times now but I couldn't hum it to save my life. It's rather unmelodious somehow. The singer I guess is good but I'm not a huge fan of her voice ... or her dress. Albania probably won't do very well this year, alas. :-(

But go see for yourselves. Aurela Gaçe performs Kënga ime - 'My Song' - by Shpëtim Saraçi and Sokol Marsi (who will probably transform their entry's Albanian lyrics into English by the time the song is submitted for EBU approval). They will be competing for Albania on Tuesday, May 10th. I don't think we'll be seeing them again on the 14th. But best of luck to them. :-)

Lyrics with translation here.