SLOVENIA 2011 - No One

I've been a little confused about this song ... whether she was going to be performing in Slovenian or English. I didn't look into it too closely, but was hoping against hope that it'd be the former. But alas, it seems to be the latter. She performed in Slovenian in their national final, but of course they're changing it for Düsseldorf. Sigh.

Slovenia is another country that tends to do badly even though they send good entries. Like Switzerland ... or as I like to call it, Switzerland the Damned. I don't get why this happens ... I mean, mediocre results would be understandable, but consistently shitty results I don't really get. Slovenia has only been able to get to the final once since 2004, and even then they didn't end up higher than 15th place. I don't know how they manage it. I'm afraid it may in part be to do with the presentation - or in fact I'm sure that's part of it - just look up their entries in 2007 and 2008 and see how they did with those, respectively. Alas.

In Switzerland's case it's probably different, but Slovenia certainly can't be accused of not taking chances and not being original. Opera, classical, pop, ballads, uptempo numbers, complete and utter trash ... they've really tried a lot of different things over the past few years. It never seems to work. This year they're trying something else again - a completely standard ESC ditty with a pretty young thing in a tight dress. Maybe this time they're on to something. ;-)

They may be, actually. This song is kind of low-key, but also rather dramatic ... obviously not very catchy, but ballads rarely are ... although the chorus does have a bit of a hook to it ... but the song is really gripping when you're hearing it. The singer has a good voice with some character ... she's pretty and the performance is pretty good. I like this song a lot and I'm happy to see Slovenia back on track after last year's atrocious misfire. With their luck I wouldn't take anything for granted but IMO they could well get to the final with this one. Fingers crossed. :-)

This is Maja Keuc performing No One (or rather Vanilija) by Matjaž Vlašič and Urša Vlašič. They will be competing for Slovenia on Thursday, May 12th. Good luck. :-)

Widescreen here.

Lyrics with translation here.