Earlier this year he told us that he’d avoid opera despite his prowess in the genre. And on Sunday North Macedonia’s Eurovision 2020 star Vasil Garvanliev kept his promise, dropping his genre-crossing number “You”.
The song dovetails with the ESC 2020 theme #OpenUp. Vasil describes it this way:
“‘You’, is an invitation for everyone to connect, open up, dance, and celebrate the moment. We’ve all been there. The moment when that unexplainable thing happens and sensations take over you. The choice is yours: let go, put your dancing shoes on, celebrate, and just dance.”
North Macedonia at Eurovision 2020: Vasil “You”
The stylish video oozes raw sensuality as Vasil and a woman lock eyes before engaging in heated dance moves. This is how the Macedonian team describe the premise of the video.
“It’s 7am after a crazy night out. You’re at a bar choosing what to do next. In walks a person who shows that it takes just one look, one connection to make a difference and start a beautiful change for the better.”
Perhaps deploying his stage training, Vasil makes it clear he knows how to move and tell a story. The dance moves are not predictable. They’re contemporary and avant-garde. At times we think the female may crush him, at other times their bodies seem to be intertwined. This is a chance encounter that he doesn’t want to let go of: “We may only have tonight, hold me tight and let’s ignite … and for the moment I … just wanna dance with YOU.”
The beauty was brought to life by an all-star team. It was directed by Milena Vitman and recorded and edited by Gjorgi Vacev, and produced by Jellmaz Dervishi.
Vasil’s musical team includes Nevena Neskoska. She’s a Macedonian composer and producer who was born in Ohrid but raised in Chicago, where, coincidentally, Vasil spent much of this teenage years. Nevena wrote the song’s lyrics, along with Kalina Neskoska and Alice Schroeder. Nevena and Javier Lloret de Muller produced and arranged the track, and were later joined by Darko Dimitrov and Lazar Cvetkoski.
Nice uptempo pop song. Macedonia always has good songs. Its catchy and contemporary, I like it!
I will wait for the live performance and the staging. That is what worries me about Macedonia.
I didn’t understood the hype last year, especially by the juries, and I’m not gonna understand this one… Meh… Next
North Macedonia is known for sending good/average/entertaining songs, but mess up everything else. North Macedonia has never been good at appealing to televotes, while they could actually win the jury. North Macedonia has a traditionally weak televote base. And if it is not the choreography, then it is the costimography, or the camera shots, or the weird facials or smth that doesn’t work.. So my expectations aren’t high for this one. Especially when the PR is amateurish and the video is just chaotic junk.
Macedonia will SLAY!! 🙂
more like not passing to the final, same buzz and then flop, as “Dance alone”, “Lost and found”, “To the sky”…
At least we know what words Vasil would now not be able to pronounce “Don’t be afraid to be who you are”. His video is like a message “Stay in the closet, pretend you are someone else”. The video could have been him singing with a bend in that bar and a couple of dancers passionately dancing. He is not good at dancing obviously anyhow. Another better concept for the video would have been if it was recorded outdoor like in a park and people would have been affected by the beat and start dancing with whomever they find around..… Read more »
Park or no park…he is defining HIMSELF and his lead female dancer, and has brought the “intricate moment” between 2 individuals in a morning bar…nothing wrong with that…Macedonia to win for a change would be great
Damn , I love this !
It’s in my Top 10 !
I saw two rankings similar to mine on youtube. ESC Tory and XAZ.
1. Italy, 2. Germany, 3. Lithuania, 4. Russia?, 5. Azerbaijan?, 6. Norway, 7. Belgium, 8. Albania, 9. Greece, 10. Malta?,
11. Estonia, 12. Czech Republic, 13. Denmark, 14. Austria, 15. Belarus, 16. Sweden, 17. Iceland, 18. Switzerland, 19. Cyprus, 20. Spain
21. Portugal, 22. Poland, 23. Romania, 24. Serbia, 25. United Kingdom, 26. Australia, 27. Finland, 28. Georgia, 29. North Macedonia 30. Ireland
31. Ukraine, 32. San Marino, 33. Slovenia, 34. Armenia, 35. Croatia, 36. France, 37. Netherlands, 38. Bulgaria, 39. Latvia, 40. Moldova, 41. Israel.
Some changes.
1. Italy, 2. Germany, 3. Lithuania, 4. Russia?, 5. Azerbaijan?, 6. Norway, 7. Belgium, 8. Albania, 9. Greece, 10. Malta?,
11. Estonia, 12. Czech Republic, 13. Denmark, 14. Austria, 15. Belarus, 16. Sweden, 17. Iceland, 18. Switzerland, 19. Cyprus, 20. Spain,
21. Portugal, 22. Poland, 23. Romania, 24. Serbia, 25. United Kingdom, 26. Australia, 27. Finland, 28. Georgia, 29. North Macedonia, 30. Ireland,
31. Ukraine, 32. Slovenia, 33. Armenia, 34. Croatia, 35. Latvia, 36. France, 37. Netherlands, 38. Bulgaria, 39. Moldova, 40. San Marino, 41. Israel.
Whatever, girl …. whatever .
I am greek and damn i love it. They need good staging for this, otherwise it cant qualify in the bloodbath semi final
It seems that I’m only one of few people really liking it. I hope North Macedonia will qualify this year!
My first impression is that the song is not great but it’s also not awful. A little cheesy but the instrumental will probably stuck in our heads soon. Maybe it’s one of these songs that just need some time to grow on you. I also expected a more dynamic and powerful chorus but I feel that they were probably having a different, more relaxed vibe in mind.
Macedonia del Norte 2/10
“We’ve all been there… It’s 7am after a crazy night out. In walks a person who shows that it takes just one look, one connection to make a difference and start a beautiful change for the better.”
Have we all been there? Well I haven´t… now I feel even more depressed and lonely :-/
Yeah, it’s a pretty stupid description. Why would someone walk in a bar at 7AM anyway?
don’t be! you’re not the only one!
The song has nice rhythm and it’s memorable. It’s up to them to create a good staging and not destroying their songs as they did apart from Tamara
The chemistry is real???? Isn’t he an openly gay? If you mean him and the bartender, then I’m convinced.
oh look at that, the homophobe is back
Are you dumb or what ? Homophobe my ass!
wait whoa this is not the right comment I meant to reply to, I am sorry
meant to reply to someone called guitar heart, not you polliu, I sincerely apologise
It’s a bop!
sis this INSTRUMENTALLLLL
After further thought this is going to do really well. It’s another Switzerland 2019. From SF1 I see the following auto qualifiers:
Lithuania, Norway, Romania, Malta, Israel, North Macedonia, and Russia. Australia and Sweden borderline. Who else?
Really well??? She Got Me is miles better.
And on Mr. Scoreboard, the song is not so popular.
Australia and Sweden will qualify with ease. North Macedonia is borderline and more likely to not qualify than qualify.
I think qualifiers are: AUS, RUS, LIT, ROM, NOR, ISR, SWE, AZ, UKraine. Leaves only one spot open: if SLO and MK both vote for Croatia, then it will be borderline qualifier. Don’t see Macedonia qualifying, but it can surprise. But Slovenia, Belarus, Belgium and Cyprus are 100% non-qualifying.
I’m not really feeling this unfortunately… but good luck to him and North Macedonia at Rotterdam
The video: Daring, seductive, inappropriately brilliant; it slowly builds up to the end. It is tied with Greece as my favourite video of the season. (No, really, it is.) About the music: I love it. This might be my personal favourite song of the season. It has everything I like in it. 🙂 The verses smoothly draw me into the beat through the cool bluesy chords and suspensions. The Chorus has a great extension. There is development of the melody up the octave and down again. There are “cooldown” Bridges, and I love the backing track that shines through the… Read more »
I’m so happy you like it. It does my heart good when a divisive song finds a big proponent.
Indeed. I like to react to the music for what it is. I pay little attention to the hype or the PR. I do understand why some feel disappointed at the lack of gay representation in the video story. However, this representation may actually exist if you interpret the woman as hypnotising the man against his will. Hence: Daring, naughty, and possibly delightfully bisexual in subtext.
Everyone was hating on N. Macedonia with Proud before her live performances. This is great. It will stand out in the semi’s easily
i’ve been listening to this for 2 hours now haha, i guess i’m addicted to it
Anyway, my aunt is an astrologer and i asked her to do the winner prediction and she says Romania is going to win.
Did you ask her if Vasil will qualify?
Didn’t expect this sound. But I like it. It has potential. With good staging this could work. And with all the slow songs in semi 1 this could stand out enough..
This will qualify over Sweden in SF1
I guess he wants to dance?
they used to send awesome songs like dance alone and lost and found.. now they send this
And he is in semi 1…The teams needs some amazing staging to make it work.
Any word on the Czech and Albanian revamps?
There’s probably an avalanche of uploads on the official channel tomorrow morning.
Apparently, Albania’s revamp is almost finished. The final version will be presented in a few days.
Doesn’t everyone need to hand in their entries tomorrow, seeing as it is the deadline? How can it be just almost finished now when the deadline day is minutes away?
It is a “creative deadline”. 😀
Technically, Albania had their song in months ago. As long as they have that in, they can tinker with it as long as they’d like.
I believe Albania’s revamp is already finished by now, but maybe it will take longer to be presented because they normally do it together with the video.
About Czech Republic: there’s a post on Benny’s Instagram from 4 days ago about him coming back home after his revamp trip to Kenya.
Basically what happened yesterday is that all songtitles had to be submitted to the EBU. Revamps and/or changes to the song are still allowed.
In English? Unfortunately not!!!
Albania’s song is now finished and it maybe will be released tomorrow (meaning today lol). We have the new title “FALL FROM THE SKY”. Prepare for a brand new song i think this will change the Top-s either in a good or bad way.
Arilena posted 2 hours ago in Instagram: “Fall From The Sky”
@eurovision
The new title is so different, I wonder if even the meaning of the song will be another. Also, she’s wearing white on the picture, which may indicate that they’re indeed going in a totally different direction.
Which means that our preliminary ratings and reviews are now totally useless and we don’t know if we are in for a masterpiece, a disaster or anything in between…
PS. If the clips from Russian and Azeri songs are real…. no comment! 🙁
Again, I am grateful for Portugal and Finland picking stunning ballads. Sure, there’s quite a few of them, but I still love them! 🙂
………nope
Yeah the lyrics are pretty generic, but personally the instrumental saved it for me. I think we might’ve found this year’s fuego/she got me equivalent.
It’s not THAT bad. I think it’s pretty decent. It could qualify. Let’s not rule it out.
I like it! Good luck North Macedonia! The song is solid but it isn’t amazing and won’t qualify in and of itself. This will need a great show in Rotterdam, but if they pull it off, it can give them a good result.
I think this might qualify! Keep in mind that this is not a strong year and most of the songs sound like they would not deserve to qualify any other year previous.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0NmWbjAQOyE
Azerbaijan 2020
really hope this isn’t the official song
Not exctatic, but like it (and what a relief adter the dullness of the Danish entry this weekend.)
I like it! The tango elements give it something we haven’t got already this year, nice effort North Macedonia?
The first part of the song isn’t bad but the second kinda failed to live up on the build up momentum from the first part.. it kinda stays flat, there is no bang, and therefore the outcome is meh.. as for the video.. wow, this is really embarrassingly low budget, amateurish, bad dancing, bad acting, no go video.. next, should I even say a word about the hype and the pathetic teasers that we saw in the past month.. well it seems like the other commentators already said everything – disappointing .. Honestly the teaser made me expect a song… Read more »
What about Azerbaijan, Russia, Malta ?
Russia’s song will be first performed live both on the radio and on the TV on Friday, the 13th of March. Still not sure whether the audio or the video are going to be released before then. (The song has already been submitted to the EBU as required by the rules. Also, the team of NRJ radio who have listened to the song have said today: “This is going to become a major hit”. Most songs of LB are not really radio friendly)
it should be released tomorrow , it is the deadline
It is the deadline for submitting the song to the EBU, not release. Well, I have a feeling that it will be released tomorrow, however, no official information regarding that. At the moment we have official information about radio and live TV debut – 13th of March.
“This is going to be a major hit”…never heard that before…
This little clip claiming to be the Russian entry just popped up on a YT channel:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tut7M-LLwSk
If it is, well…it sure is something…(Man, imagine if its jury scores are twelve points from Belarus and Azerbaijan and nothing else?)
There’s….no way that that can actually be it.
I would doubt it too. No delegation could ever consider that an actual entry. (Then again, Switzerland heard “Celebrate” and thought that was worth sending, so who knows?)
16 years ago. This is just a remix of a snippet that got leaked:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cc0J7csCPG8
I’d only accept this if the staging was based on this video.
The band has officially confirmed that all the “snippets” circulating on the internet are fake.
This is a step back for North Macedonia on recent years. Just you’re average pop song. Don’t think they’re qualifying
This year is sooooooo slow. It’s got a good chance just for the fact that it’s upbeat alone.
I like it,
and I do think he has a chance of qualifying.
Still waiting for Russia, Malta and Azerbaijan…
Hmmm…I don’t know why, but I have such a strong feeling that he is singing about some special lady, who is not there with him in the video, so that’s why there is no chemistry between him and the dancer… However, I like the song!!!
The straightwashing in this video is embarrassing.
The song isn’t necessarily terrible (although I don’t think it’s amazing either), but this feels like a lesson in how NOT to tease a song. Don’t release a snippet teasing a modern ethnic pop song as a front for a fairly generic pop song.
Yeah, that’s annoying af but countries do it all the time. I remember how the Azerbaijani snippet last year and the Serbian one in 2017 all made us think we were in for some very ethnic-sounding tracks but in the end both of them turned out to be pretty standard pop songs.
OMG. Macedonia what a good song. Really cool . Thumbs up!!!!
Most countries want to win, but they lost the clue after both the winners of televoting and jury vote didn’t end in top-5 last year.
OMG This is really bad, sorry this dont like ,really not good NM this year.,dissapointed
The song is actually even better than I expected.
Like it! Can it be the highest in the former Yugoslavia bloc? It can.
I would say Serbia based on the fact they are competing with a full on dance song, have a well known act, and because they’ve done the best historically (this is considering factors other than the quality of the song, singers and staging)
There’s a video on YouTube for Samira Efendi called Cleopatra, not sure it’s been officially announced as the entry yet but looks like that’s what it is… there’s a lot going on in it that’s for sure. Even if it wasn’t Azerbaijan I’d still bet money this had Swedish song-writers.
She’s working with a Dutch songwriting team
There are interesting things happening in the background (some flamenco and tango hints, a balkan flavor), showing that they put a lot of thought on how to produce this one. But unfortunately, on the top of that, he’s just singing an average pop song. Loved the choreography in the video. Obviously, Vasil won’t be able to do that on the stage, but having dancers around him making avant-garde moves can be cool.
Overhyped. Didn’t live up to its expectations. But could still qualify amongst the other ballads