The Wiwi Jury — our in-house panel of music unprofessionals — took trains, planes and automobiles to Hungary after the first heat of A Dal 2016, and set to reviewing the first six acts who have qualified for the semi-final. First up is ‘the girl on fire’ Reni Tolvai, who made it to the next stage through a tie-break. Do we feel the “Fire”? Keep on reading and find out…
Reni Tolvai – Fire
Watch her live performance at MTVA.
“Fire” reviews
Robyn: Was Boggie’s “Wars for Nothing” all for nothing? Reni uses sexy war imagery (and American football players?!) to stage her song and it’s just so much more thrilling than Boggie’s earnest tree o’ guns. “Fire” and Reni are dripping with attitude. She delivers a cool pop track, with even a hint of hip hop that wouldn’t scare off juries. I’d like to see this in the A Dal final.
Score: 7.5/10
Angus: I feel the heat! The pyrotechnics, screaming sirens and light show are on point. This is the kind of big dance thumper that Eurovision has been so missing in recent years because of the reign of terror inflicted by the professional juries. Burn Reni BURN.
Score: 8.5/10
Judit: Maybe my opinion won’t be popular, but while I was watching her performance, there was only one thing on my mind: Is she trying to be the Hungarian Beyoncé? Reni has a really good voice, and I’m still waiting a better song from her. With “Fire”, she still couldn’t find her real style, and the stage was simply too much for me. Of course it can improve, but she’s not in my top eight. Sorry.
Score: 5/10
Denise: Hello, Georgia 2014! I like it that they wanna try special things on the stage, but this parachute doesn’t work. I liked the song — and I still do — but I was really worried about the live performance since songs like this don’t really work on stage. Now I wanna say that I was wrong, but I’m afraid I wasn’t. It’s missing the energy, and the voices of her and the background singers aren’t really connecting. Still, a good score because I like the song and the act can be changed.
Score: 8/10
Sinan: No, you are not on fire, honey! I just didn’t understand what a parachute has to do with this song… never mind. I think the rap part should’ve been sung from an experienced rapper, not from a singer. Nice vocal performance, though.
Score: 7/10
Edd: Reni is less “on fire” and more a hot mess. The song doesn’t really have a chorus, but it makes up for that in the gangster post-chorus. The truth is that trash like this is actually very popular nowadays, and to be honest I can see Europe (or at least, Europe’s televoters) lapping this up.
Score: 7/10
In the Hungarian Wiwi Jury we have 14 jurors, but only have room for 6 reviews. The remaining 8 scores are below!
Luis: 7/10
Patrick: 7/10
Dayana: 6.5/10
Ramadan: 7/10
Antranig: 10/10
Cristian: 6/10
Mikhail: 7/10
To reduce potential bias, we drop the highest and lowest scores prior to calculating the average. We removed a low of 5 and a high of 10.
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GURRL…. anyways i hated the live show ,but the studio version is very addictive ,i just wanna pop my booty all the way to the gods henny
7.5/10
I can picture this song in the Billboard top 40. It gives me Major Lazer vibes and it’s my favorite of all A Dal so far. Original songs that could be hits on ESC? Yes.
Amazing song but she scraped through! I think if she ditches the staging and the gaudy outfit she had and ramps up the dark/edgy side of the song it might fair better with the judges
Hungary would have to be downright mad to send such garbage, especially when they’ve actually got some decent potential entries…
I kinda really like it
She is better than life itself.