The Wiwi Jury — our in-house panel of musical unprofessionals — continues its reviews in Norway with “Louder” by Raylee. In her music video Raylee plays a fierce boxer, but is her song a winner?
“Louder” by Raylee
Robyn: This sounds like Cheryl Cole trying to be Rihanna and/or Beyonce. It’s fun and sassy, but there’s just not much to it. I’d happily listen to this if it were playing in a shop, but I don’t think there’s enough there to work at Eurovision.
Score: 6/10
Deban: The louder you turn up the volume on this, the more autotuned it comes across, making it much harder for this to work as a live piece. Besides, this is typically the sort of entry that won’t stand the test of time. It already sounds dated. By May, you’d be turning this off!
Score: 3/10
Renske: This one could work it on a Spotify playlist. It has a good beat, but it’s a bit monotonous (we all now know what happened last year to Greece). I’m also wondering how she’ll sing this live, because this one is beaming with autotune.
Score: 7/10
Josh: I’m loving this, but it’s too commercial for Eurovision. This song would slay on the radio and iTunes charts, but there is no hook in the song that makes me think it’s stage ready. It’s a great song to unleash your inner ghetto dance moves, but I can’t see it doing that well on stage. I do love it though.
Score: 7.5/10
Francheska: To be honest, this bores me. It’s typical dance mid-2000s with cliche dance-like lyrics. I know, I know, it’s supposed to be vibrant and energetic, but it just sounds like a 99-cent store version of “Single Ladies” and “Pon de Replay”. It sounds like a 13-year-old girl paid a record company to autotune her beyond death and give her a nonsensical song to since. Please stop it!
Score: 3/10
Sopon: She wants to be R&B, but it’s just not working out for her. She’s your typical petite soprano girl, like quite a few others who have already won tickets to Vienna, but her genre isn’t a good fit. Imagine if Lordi tried to sing opera. That’s how mismatched it is.
Score: 4/10
Angus: This is my JAM. “Louder” just makes you want to dance and that probably has something to do with the fact it’s mashed up “Dip It Low” and “Pon De Replay”. Pure early ’00s R&B and it is AMAZING. Likely too commercial to actually to do well, but the $a$$ on show here deserves strong marks.
Score: 8.5/10
Ramadan: I usually like R’n’B music, but I’m not feeling this at all. It sounds VERY cheap, and like it was done in a day. It’s just too messy for my liking.
Score: 3/10
Patrick: Normally I’m not a big fan of that genre, and this really is a reason for it. It’s really noisy, you can’t hear her voice perfectly and it doesn’t match all in all. Raylee might be a good singer but this is definitely not Eurovision material.
Score: 3/10
Anthony: When all 11 finalists were revealed during the press conference back in January, Raylee was the one I had a soft spot for. As for the song itself, I loved the 10 second introduction. Then afterwards, the tempo remains very much the same throughout. The beats to it are very reminiscent to Alesha Dixon’s “The Boy Does Nothing”, which overall it actually makes this infectiously catchy. You go girl!
Score: 8.5/10
The highest and lowest scores are removed before calculating the final score. We have dropped a low of 3 and a high of 8.5.
The Wiwi Jury Verdict: 5.25/10
This is THE catchiest song of the year from ANY country! I know she probably won’t make it, but I have this on repeat <333333