The 33-year-old artist nevertheless performed brilliantly on the stage of the Malmö Arena, offering a performance worthy of his talent, capable of making his country proud.
After the reminder of the Belgian victory of Sandra Kim (1986) and the beautiful performance of Loïc Nottet (2015), our representative Mustii gently started his dark pop title “Before The Party’s Over”, with accuracy in the voice, surrounded of microphones on stand like an arena, before coming out to explode on the stage, carried by the voices of thousands of Eurofans, in the spirit of the Eurovision slogan “United By music”.
Mustii unveils “Before The Party’s Over”
Dressed in white, whose open jacket revealed a transparent top dotted with crystals, the artist was accompanied by his music video in the background of a smoky stage. A production worked with Nick Coutsier, dancer and choreographer who has notably collaborated with Beyoncé.
The song “an ode to life” carried a unifying theme, resilience, revealing itself as a darker version of “I love life” by Sandra Kim, the artist explained in interviews. “An unformatted song” which sticks to its DNA. He interpreted it as desired “both fragile at the beginning and powerful at the end”. An end marked by the political message annotated on his arm and revealed by his open shirt: “Peace”. However, any political message is prohibited during the competition, which is intended to be apolitical.
Eurovision: relive Mustii’s performance and his political message
Unhappy with public votes
But all this will not have been enough. It must be said that the level of this second semi-final was particularly high, whether in terms of choreography, voices, staging, LED effects… The bookmakers and our newspaper had already noted the artist’s “weaknesses” , or rather its staging in the face of its formidable competitors: costume too white/sober when we could have expected more fantasy, lighting too strong, and a climax which arrives (probably) too late… As for to the song, its climax undoubtedly arrived a little too late for Eurofans.
Why Mustii can go far at Eurovision
The public vote was decisive for this second semi-final (the jury only intervenes in the final, more sensitive to this type of music and performance). However, the semi-finals are mainly watched by Eurofans who like kitsch and exuberance, sometimes to the detriment of the quality of the songs. And the vote between “friendly” countries (Armenia and Georgia) can sometimes be merciless…
