The Wiwi Jury — our in-house panel of music unprofessionals — has 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 no doubt perfecting their vocals in time for the show.
The next entrant up for review is NAPOLI with “Chasing Rushes”. Will NAPOLI chase the win at the grand final? Read on to find out!
NAPOLI – “Chasing Rushes”
“Chasing Rushes” reviews
Antranig: NAPOLI are no strangers to the Belarusian selection. The strengths of “Chasing Rushes” are the strengths of their previous entries — the big notes and the powerful vocals. But this is the first time that I’ve heard a NAPOLI song and felt it sounded current. This isn’t my personal favourite NAPOLI song but this has more potential to succeed at Eurovision than anything we’ve heard from them before.
Score: 6.5/10
Luis: Coming from that horrible “Love Love Peace Peace” attempt from last year, “Chasing Rushes” feels like a wonder. However, not too many people know who NAPOLI are. Here, they serve big diva notes, pop beats and dramatic lyrics. Been there, done that. This song is unoriginal and the title’s meaning is quite unclear. How do you chase an intangible thing?
Score: 4/10
Natalie: I don’t know what chasing rushes is, but by the sounds of it, it’s something pretty bad. This has got some serious electropop power, and she has a great voice packed with emotion – the only thing this lacks is originality. Those pounding electro beats are nothing new, and especially next to the weird lyrics, don’t really make for an inspiring song. It feels like a bit of a waste, honestly.
Score: 5/10
Robyn: In the past, NAPOLI’s national final entries haven’t been all that impressive, but “Chasing Rushes” is ok. It seems inspired by Aminata’s “Love Injected”, a combination of electronic pop and big dramatic vocals. Olga’s voice sounds a little strained at times and her diction could do with improvement. But all up, this is one of the strongest entries from NAPOLI.
Score: 6.5/10
Sebastian: With strong vocals and a strong stage presence, NAPOLI know how to own a stage. But “Chasing Rushes” in an apt description of the song. There’s no element of growth, it’s soft than BAM, then soft then BAM again. These many heavy transitions make it a little overwhelming.
Score: 6/10
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:
Anthony: 6.5/10
Chris: 5/10
Lukas: 6/10
Barnabas: 5.5/10
Deban: 6/10
Jonathan: 5/10
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 4 and a high of 6.5.
Good voice and strong music. It feels a little messy to me though.
5/10
rushes? don´t tell me she is singing about drug coctails? That´s no good.
yes a belarusian nf veteran always bringing the fun vibes! i always hear her saying ‘sick of chasing russia’ which is kind of an allegory for belarus …
The song is indeed a bit unclear in it’s message and leaves a lot of questions. The way *I* got it (and I might be wrong) is that she is tired of meaningless flings and wants to settle down. Now, Olga is undoubtely a strong vocal, but she seems to be out of breath a bit during the chorus, which makes the pronunciation of English lyrics quite less inteligible. 4/10
Strong chorus, great vocals, great stage presence.
This is a typical NAPOLI entry. Not bad but very cliché and nothing special.