From the moment Russia announced that Sergey Lazarev would sing at Eurovision, the country has been one of the hot favourites to win the contest. Whilst “You Are The Only One” may be loved by many Eurovision fans (just look at our Semi Final One poll), there were naysayers who said Sergey wouldn’t be able to deliver the song live. Well guess what? Sergey just blew it up at his concert in Kursk the other night, delighting the audience with the first live performance of his Eurovision song.
Watch: Sergey Lazarev performs “You Are The Only One” live
https://youtu.be/pzf85eT1Yl4
Sergey delivers a perfect vocal performance and adds some spice with well-trained choreography. Y’all, that does not look easy! Sergey also doesn’t seem afraid to improvise vocally, but there’s still plenty of power in his voice. It’s fair to say that it’s a big contrast to Frans, his nearest rival as it stands for the Eurovision title.
The dancers also create an energetic atmosphere around the stage. Of course, this is only one way the song can be staged live. We don’t know yet if this is what the staging will look like in Stockholm (Russia rarely reveal those secrets), or whether the dancers will even accompany Sergey. With the added LED screens that will be used in Sweden — and whatever equipment Russia can pull out — we could see something on a much grander scale. Still, this is at least a good indicator of Sergey’s talents live.
Of course, the audience went crazy as you can hear in the video (so much so that sometimes it’s hard to hear the music). Sergey’s loyal fanbase will help him all the way, but a performance like this could be what seals him the deal
What do you make of the performace? Are you happy with Sergey’s energy on stage? Let us know in the comments below and via our Twitter page!
Male version of Helena Paparizou :)))
I’m not impressed with his song at all. It is overrated. But I like the way he look. He should be more naked to get my vote. 😛
Definitely not my favourite song this year and it tries to hard to follow a Eurovision winning recipe.
Having said that though, I think it’s gonna be this year’s winner!
😀
As much as it pains me to say it, Russia has the winning package this year. Well done Sergey. x
Lazarev in Kursk? LOL. will his song have better chances than Kursk submarine? nice sign 🙂 shitty video quality, hard to hear him
Do Russians look at this bloke and think ‘he’s butch and masculine’
I hope its not gonna win. Its the land from hel.
OMG he has to win. Definitely The best song this year!! Love it so much!
STOCHOLM on the screen just stole the show! 😀
if his performance is that camp on a night in “straight” Russia how camp is it going to be in the gayest festival of the year?
Utter crap
‘stocholm’ lol the graphic department needs to learn how to spell 😛
Just based on that outfit alone he should change his name to Generic McCheezy.
I really don’t want Russia to win, it would be a big blow for Eurovision. They’d lose out on revenue because so many LGBT including myself will not go. I would feel scared to go to Russia and there’s no way I am going if they win which is a shame because I have my eyes set on going in 2017.
Homophobic country ! Old music …
It’s pretty obvious that this will be the winner.
Hope he wins!
2016 is for me the year when music died. I feel like I have already heard all Eurovision songs a thousand times before.
Sochi 2017! Use the olympic stadium! That staging was amazing!
Amazing vocals , love love . Russia will win 12 points from France
I still don´t like his voice, no charisma… a boy who pretends to B a hunk, a bit of pathos for chicks and horny lads. Of course he nails it LIVE in his country! A lot of Russians Rn´t critical if they imagine Mother Russia could play a role.
So dated and lots of screaming rather than singing
The only thing that is for sure is that he is a good looking guy, but the song is so so….this performance also is very bland. He will not win in Stockholm with this performance, obviously he is going to have a different presentation. Vocals are ok. But I’m not at all impressed and/or overwhelmed by this performance…
He is a hot man ,no question about it ,but the song is horrible, ew.
Hmm, Mikhail Vasilyev is not exactly objective about this.
all those veins popping out of his neck while belting that high note and y’all saying that is playback?
gurl.
This performance was way too cheezy for my taste. And cheap. Russia will somehow transform the music video to the stage. No doubt about it. But it’s too shallow. At least Måns had a message. And it felt closer and will still feel closer than this in May. This is nothing even though the song itself is one of my favourites. And wasn’t this playback?
@Marc: In my opinion Portugal, Ukraine, Israel, France and Serbia were way better than Believe.
@Sara D,
Probably because Jamala has already performed 1944 live at the Ukraine national final, but there has only been the video released of the Russian song, so a live performance is newsworthy
I get why this is one of the favorites, I really do. Sergey is a strong vocalist as well. However, Russia will not win for multiple reasons and the jury will not put this in top 5. If not Sweden wins again, I think we will see a surprise win this year. France maybe 🙂
Very boring song … bad vocals … I don’t know this overrated. Surely not a deserved winner.
WOW! I knew he is good live.. But if this recording blew me away, imagine the performance in the final. Europe, see you in Moscow next year! 🙂
Sergey: Thanks for the thrill, man!
Sarah I was talking about televote if I remember right Russia got 7 place in 2011.
BTW Dima’s entries are much better than this. At least they sound as 2006 and 2008 music and not a chiche eurovision song . Believe won because that year we didn’t have any really good.
Jamala has live concert perfomance too. Why there are no topic about this ?))
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sL4oCSYEx2w
You never expect Russia to go for the gay vote 🙂
All of those who don’t think Sweden may win probably keep forgetting how Lena won without a single note in tune or a really ESC song (sounded like Lily Allen debut album era reject)
Unable to produce a fraction of the charisma he shows in the video. Maybe it is because of the dancing but if Russia wants to win he needs to do more. Moved down from 4th to 7th.
The only thing that left me saying wow was his looks cause the guy is hot but the song is just old.Yeah, it’s catchy but it can’t win.Even the dance felt like it was from 2007 or so.Overrated.
Greece, France, Ukraine and Serbia are not gonna winn this year. I hope Russia dont winn. A wote for Russia, is a wote for Puttin. Homophobic, warlover and killing people. Sweden 2017
I cannot agree that Sergey’s bid is better than “Never let you go”, but It is easily better than “Believe” which ironically brought them their first win.
“big contrast to Frans, his nearest rival as it stands for the Eurovision title”
Give me a break. Sweden won’t even be in the final top-10. Stop treating Sweden as some sort of behemoth in a year where it clearly isn’t.
The only competition in Sergey’s field “as it stands” is probably Amir from France. And of course nobody can exclude that a female entry different from what won last year (Ukraine or Serbia perhaps?) will instead finish victorious.
@Racal: You’re not that far. Sergey Lazarev was in Smash! a russian boys band. But honestly, this is much better that Dima Bilan’s entires to the contest.
MOSCOW 2017!
This is like “Dima Bilan meets cheap boysband from the 1990s”. Sure, you can see they put a lot of money into this but… Come one, are you really going to vote for this Europe? 🙁
@Ewan: Personally I think this contest has “gems” like Estonia, Germany and Italy, but don’t forget that Eurovision is a mainstream tv show so basically wonders like The Common Linnets are not common.
It began with Iceland being my favourite entry then Spain took over. Now after seeing this. Russia is at my top spot! I would LOVE if they could do the staging like the music video. I think this might be the winner! 🙂
This is almost going like 2011 again, the well produced but extremely dated and plain pop song winning, ruining the ground being made by much better songs (Germany, Slovenia, etc.) that would have brought the contest out of the kitsch-ville 00’s and into the modern 2010’s. It’s not hard to see that winners influence the sound of many songs in the following years, mainly from countries who don’t have much chance at winning or don’t have as diverse a music industry to warrant something different, or some that stupidly think the audience wants the same thing every year. Sweden luckily… Read more »
@ Juan .. You say this is a song contest then if it actually is Russia shouldn’t get a good result … The quality of this entry is crap !!
Horrible soulless empty cheap trashy predictable emotionless silly badly written vulgar entry .. If this wins it will be a bad thing for eurovision .. Nearly as bad as Azerbaijan 2011 !!!
Frankly, if Russia wins, they deserve it. The song is great and Sergey Lazarev is a talented singer (There are lots of videos in You Tube from his live shows).
Besides politics, this is a song contest and Russia has taking the competition seriously.