The Wiwi Jury — our in-house panel of music unprofessionals — recently tried Nigella’s amazing beef goulash recipe. After chowing down we gathered round the table to watch the Hungarian A Dal performance of Benji with his song “Kötéltánc” (“Tightrope”) . Did his thoughtful song keep its balance? Or did it come crashing down? Read on to find out…
Benji – “Kötéltánc”
Watch Benji’s live performance at MTVA
“Kötéltánc” reviews
Robyn: This is a very pleasant surprise. I love the moody acoustic guitar sound and Benji’s intense but likeable delivery. For a non-Hungarian listener, Benji is the key to this song working. His soulful and expressive voice conveys the emotion of the lyrics. (By the way, just imagine how much better “Autumn Leaves” would have been with this staging.)
Score: 8/10
Angus: This is beautiful. It looks gorgeous, sounds gorgeous and leaves a warm feeling in my heart. Benji has me hanging on every note and he eclipses almost all of the competition.
Score: 9/10
Judit: He has a good voice, I can’t deny it, but c’mon… It’s one of the most boring songs in the field. This performance is okay for the semi-final but probably not good enough for the final. If he can improve his performance before the next live show, I will give him more points, but for now it’s simply forgettable.
Score: 5/10
Antranig: This song touched me the very first time I heard it and I experienced the same thing watching the live performance. Benji’s voice is incredible and he would make a terrific choice for Hungary. Another force working in his favour is that this is easily the best song in Hungarian. If they’re after a song in their native tongue, this is the one to go all the way.
Score: 9.5/10
Cristian: This Hungarian selection, sadly, is full of bland songs, but this one has something more. I like the progression of the melody, the beautiful strings, and Benji’s voice, warm and enveloping. I have to say that I like the fact he is of Asian descent and he sings in Hungarian — it’s intriguing. I love it when cultures are mixed with each other.
Score: 8/10
Mikhail: I really like how this sounds. Benji’s voice is very powerful and captivating. The song itself has a deep, meaningful melody, which I really like. And those strings! They sound perfect! I always love some strings in the composition and here they work great!
Score: 8/10
In the Hungarian Wiwi Jury we have 13 jurors, but only have room for 6 reviews. The remaining 8 scores are below!
Denise: 4/10
Sinan: 7/10
Edd: 3.5/10
Ramadan: 7/10
Patrick: 8/10
Dayana: 7.5/10
Luis: 9/10
To reduce potential bias, we drop the highest and lowest scores prior to calculating the average. We removed a low of 3.5 and a high of 9.5.
Great voice but an utter snooze-fest