The Wiwi Jury — our in-house panel of music unprofessionals — have journeyed to the beautiful city of Minsk to check out the 10 acts competing in Eurofest 2018. With the national final on February 16, each act is busy getting their vocals on point.
The next entrant up for review is diva Anastasiya Malashkevich with “World On Fire”. Will her song get our ears burning? Or will it fizzle out? Read on to find out!
Anastasiya Malashkevich – “World On Fire”
“World On Fire” reviews
Anthony: A voice to set the world on fire, Anastasiya does run the risk of overdoing it as her live audition suggests. And she means business with her Swedish songwriting team which hasn’t quite got the desired effect, as this pop-rock entry finds itself overshadowed by Anastasiya’s raw vocals. From a casual viewer’s point of view, it may not be everyone’s cup of tea.
Score: 5/10
Chris: The kitchen sink effect on production here doesn’t distract from the major problem here. When you produce a lyric video for a song, and you still can’t work out exactly what the singer is saying, that’s an issue. Anastasiya would do well to sit down and revise some of these lyrics, because her diction on some words ruins the song.
Score: 4/10
Lukas: There is nothing special about this song. “World On Fire” is dated and pretty boring. Anastasiya tries way too much as her live performance wasn’t the best. Her pronunciation of the English words could be much better too, as it was hard to understand what she was singing. This entry is middle of the road at best.
Score: 5/10
Robyn: “World On Fire” sounds like a P!nk or Kelly Clarkson song from about a decade ago, that country/rock/pop blend. But it doesn’t have the appeal of anything those stars released. Anastasiya oversings, and wrings out every possible syllable in every single line. It’s overwhelming and sometimes unpleasant to listen to. As Salvador Sobral showed us in Kyiv, sometimes less is more.
Score: 4/10
Sebastian: There’s something always a little unnerving about a non-native English speaker singing in English, in a song that you can tell was not written specifically for them. “World On Fire” fits this description aptly, but Anastasiya does her darnedest to make it hers. Her voice has a nice rocky quality, if not a little too shaky at times. It’d be nice to see her return with her own song at a future EuroFest.
Score: 4.5/10
In our Eurofest Wiwi Jury, we have 11 jurors who made it to Minsk, but only room for 5 reviews. The rest of our scores can be found below:
Antranig: 7/10
Luis: 3/10
Natalie: 5/10
Barnabas: 8/10
Deban: 5.5/10
Jonathan: 4/10
Before calculating the average score, the highest and lowest scores are dropped. This is to remove outliers and reduce potential bias. We have removed a low of 3 and a high of 8.
Strong voice and the song sounds good. It gets repetitive though.
5.5/10
The studio performance I liked but she forgot lyrics and missed notes in live. Not bad but not very current either.
A 5/10.
This years’ Belarus Eurofest is really weak, but this one in its studio version is one of the best in the line-up. Anyway, the song itself is nothing special and her screams could screw up all of her chances. Anastasiya should focus on delivering it smooth and not trying to overdo it with some unnecessary super high notes.
5.5/10
The song is probably okay by itself. Not great, but passable, even if a bit dated. Anastasiya’s performance, however, was not impressive, to say at least. She tries way too hard to wow us, but fails with a bang.
4/10