Eurovision Song Contest – Abor & Tynna beim ESC: It’s the Performance, stupid

The pair of siblings Abor & Tynna from Austria drives his song »Baller« to the Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) to Basel. In the grand finale of Stefan Raab’s casting show spectacle, they prevailed in the viewer voting against four competitors. High hopes are resting on the two, because Raab has nothing less than the victory in the Eurovision Song Contest as the goal.

“Baller” is a trendy electric hip-hop song with a hook that you can never forget. It has also been the first German-language ESC song in 20 years. Abor & Tynna are classically trained musicians, whose collaboration is reminiscent of Billie Eilish and her brother Finneas. The sister sings to the tracks produced by the brother. The two of them already have stage experience, they performed as a support act by Nina Chuba.

Stefan Raab, boss, without Barbara Schöneberger, this final would not have been a real ESC experience. In her usual rustic way, she routinely led her through the show in the metallic shimmering dress. Chef Raab and his jurors did what they had done very well in the previous programs: they praised the artists above all. In any case, there was good chemistry between the Raab, which was tended to monologize and the Yvonne Catterfeld, which was always torn along, Conchita Wursts Grandzza caused the necessary ESC flair, but Nico Santos seemed shy as if he were the intern. Raab’s expertise always gave a deep insight into his conservative worldview. For example, when he explained that women at ESC only like ballads. Fortunately, La Schöneberger skilfully misaligned these well -groomed little sexisms.

Raab’s expertise always gave a deep insight into his conservative worldview.

Initially, nine finalists determined in the previous show competed against each other. As before, they initially introduced themselves with the cover version of a well -known hits and then performed their competitive contribution. All acts appeared live, they were accompanied by the highly professional band Heavy Tones. After the nine mostly successful performances, the jury sorted four acts by criteria that have not been defined. Including the Benjamin Braatz, who started with a Powerballade, who looks confusingly similar to the curly head of young Olaf Scholz.

The departure of the singing and rapping knights of the fire tail was annoying. What sounds like inflamed genitals initially turned out to be a highly original mixture of medieval skirt, goth, hip-hop and Blood and Glitter. Your catchy word game hit “Knightclub” drew the viewer fire out of your ears.

In the spectator voting of the last five, the singer Lyza reached a strong second place behind the winners Abor & Tynna. Her song “Lovers on Mars” was somewhere between the young Alanis Morissette, Melissa Etheridge and the ESC Countryband Texas Lightning. The British Moss Kena reached third place with the typical ESC Powerballad “Nothing Can Stop Love”. The singer Leonora placed her soulful but less catchy song “The Bliss” with a clear distance behind it.

The great band The Great Leslie took fifth place with the bright rock song “Thesis Days”. The band not only sounded to Måneskin, the Italian ESC winners in 2021, it also looked that way. A dark -haired singer in a retinal shirt, a dancing bassist and a hot fucked rock song. There has long been no such many extremely convincing acts in an ESC preliminary decision.

You can think of Stefan Raab’s worldview and his anachronistic comeback what you want, what he did with the boss-matter shows for the ESC in Germany, deserve the highest recognition. The shows were entertaining and had decent odds. Italy selects its ESC participants at the traditional San-Remo festival, Sweden at the melodifestival and Spain in Benidorm. All of these shows are firmly anchored quotas in their countries. The NDR responsible in Germany has tested any disgusting concepts in recent years. It was only last year that original and modern ideas went up.

Raab’s chief’s show series now continued on a large scale. His programs did exactly what other European preliminary decisions successful: the viewers had the chance to get to know different facets of the ESC candidate. They were able to make friends and fans with the acts. Hopefully this will also fuel the interests of the audience at the ESC final in Basel.

It remains to be seen whether Abor & Tynna can meet the great expectations. There is still a lot of work ahead of them. The two had the coolest song, but unfortunately also the worst choreographed performance. And it is the performance that makes the gold standard at ESC.