fruela live it up

Last night, the Wiwi Jury — our in-house panel of musical unprofessionals — gathered in Oviedo, the capital of Asturias, in northern Spain. While sipping on some sidra and enjoying our cachopos, our jurors reacted to Fruela’s song for Objetivo Eurovisión. Did we want to “live it up” or were we feeling more like snoozing on the sofa? Read on to find out…

Fruela – “Live it up”

About Fruela

From TV host to model to X Factor UK hopeful, Fruela has been all over the place. Now this 29-year-old singer from Asturias is trying his luck on RTVE’s selection for Eurovision 2017. His song “Live it up” is a pop track with traces of EDM and an infectious musical break.

Wiwi jury reviews “Live it up”

Bernardo: The Spanish version of “Live It Up” surprised me — I found it better than the English one. Despite its generic pop/EDM song qualities, Fruela brings up the fire and the looks. Bring the staging and this will clearly be the best of the three finalists. *Guilty pleasure alert!*

Score: 7.5/10

Chris: I enjoy maybe the first minute of “Live It Up”, but then the song practically repeats it for the next two. It all feels very generic and I fail to see why the Spanish jurors opted to send this through over much better options in the web casting.

Score: 3/10

Josh: There’s only one word that comes to mind when listening to “Live It Up”, and that word is generic. This lacks so much originality that whilst the production and quality is fair, it’s so forgettable that this would score lower at Eurovision than Barei did in 2016. The only thing Fruela really has working for him are his looks, but most said the same about Tooji for Norway in 2012 and look where that got him: last place.

Score: 5/10

William: The opening is melodic and atmospheric, and Fruela’s sexy vocals really draw me in. But ultimately “Live It Up” is more foreplay than follow-through. The verses are weak, the pop-drop chorus is underwhelming, and the entire song seems to be played in slow motion. Adding insult to injury, the electronic duck sounds in the chorus make this a bit too juvenile for a singer who is most definitely a man. He pleads for us to live it up, but he’s not living up to his potential with this one.

Score: 6/10

Luis: “Live it up” is a total filler. It’s enjoyable while it’s on, but it doesn’t leave any impression afterwards. Repeating the exact same structure after the first chorus doesn’t help. It just loops over the same verses and chorus and after three minutes it gets boring. Which is actually a shame, because the song is very well produced. Also, Fruela serves some very slick looks and everything, but as Bojana Stamenov said, beauty never lies. And if what lies underneath the beauty is not really interesting, the act is doomed.

Score: 5/10

Deban: Sex sells and to be honest, Fruela’s sizzling hot looks is what is driving this track. The emotions that could’ve been buried in this are washed out by the vocoder production. “Live It Up” is derivative at best, and when I press play on it, I just wanna leave it out.

Score: 3/10

Robyn: “Live It Up” is a generic dance-pop song that could be copied and pasted into any national final. It’s not even enjoyable to listen to — just a cheap copy of the type of songs found at the bottom of a “top 100 songs of 2016” list. The multilingual lyrics are a slight improvement, but they seem to have been added as an audience pleaser, not for artistic reasons. And that’s always a dangerous move at Eurovision.

Score: 4/10

Patrick: A lot of times when songs are in English with the title or words in native languages it works out well. But having the whole song in Spanish and one sentence in English doesn’t work for me at all. The song itself sounds well produced, has a contemporary sound and the lyrics are not bad either. But there is something big missing that hits me in the face and says “here I am looking damn fine”. His vocals sound promising on the record but ultimately I’m disappointed. A vocal disaster is approaching in the live show. Not a big fan of this song —it’s not bad and not good either.

Score: 5/10

Our Wiwi Jury consists of 18 jurors from across the globe. However, we only have room for eight reviews. Here are the scores of the rest of the jurors:

Antranig: 6/10

Cinan: 6.5/10

Dayana: 5.5/10

Edd: 7/10

Forrest: 3.5/10

Jason: 4/10

Jordi: 6.5/10

Jovana: 7/10

Ramadan: 7/10

Zakaria: 2/10

The highest and lowest scores are dropped prior to calculating the average score. This is to remove outliers and reduce potential bias. We have removed a low of 2 and a high of 7.5

Wiwi Jury score: 5.25/10

READ ALL OUR SPANISH WIWI JURY REVIEWS HERE

READ MORE SPAIN NEWS HERE

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cheesecake
cheesecake
7 years ago

I might be the only one, but I love this.

Briekimchi
Briekimchi
7 years ago

these*

Briekimchi
Briekimchi
7 years ago

Did not really strain themselves writing this lyrics.
This is overly-simplistic and does not have a lot to it. This is easily the least deserving of the three finalists and there are a considerable amount of songs that would have been better choices.

(J)ESC Fanatic
(J)ESC Fanatic
7 years ago

Very good verses that lead to a repetitive chorus, which does nothing but annoy you. Honestly, this shouldn’t have qualified instead of “Esclava” and “No Enemy”.

3.5/10

escAU
escAU
7 years ago

ugh all these vocal samples in music sounding like a drunk chicken being used as an accordion recently has made me turn off the radio now it’s seeping into esc >:(

mocosuburbian
mocosuburbian
7 years ago

the lyrics in english were trashy, it’s much better that they’re masked in spanish
i actually really like the distorted voice aesthetic and i think that on its own would do okay because it sounds kind of like like a charting pop song
his voice and the narcissism in the video turn me off

Paucazorla
Paucazorla
7 years ago

Changing this into the spanish version is the worst possible decision…

Unofficial Månsters Association
Unofficial Månsters Association
7 years ago

I’m still not a fan of this song, even when it first was in the top 30 of the Eurocasting. Now that he’s changed it into Spanish (mostly), I feel like there’s no way this could end up as the wildcard. This will most definitely end up in 3rd place, though I know some people do like this revision better than the English version before.

Tomas Patrick Davitt
Tomas Patrick Davitt
7 years ago

its beyond me how this qualified instead of No Enemy

Pablo
Pablo
7 years ago

A little bonus: Translation for you guys (as literal as it is): Attempting, Not Arriving, Resist, Continue One more time, everything will change. There’s no yesterday, is only today I decided to be who I am without announcing, without saving my voice Battles left to win. Dreaming, I will live I’m not gonna quit. Nothing will stop us, nothing stops us Just live it up Nothing stops us I know that in the end, I’ll wake up The pain already left. It’s over, I’m still standing I will repeat over and over again. There’s no apology, there’s no whys. I… Read more »

Pablo
Pablo
7 years ago

This sounds like MF filler that/or tries to emulate the American chart-toppers so bad. Verses are somewhat good, but in comparison, Spanish verses sound kinda clunky. Is all very “meh”, and I got the feeling the live will warrant that same description or worse. How this this go beyond No Enemy is a mystery.

3/10