Eurovision – FYR Macedonia

Though I would love to say otherwise, I don’t think that FYR Macedonia has any hope of winning this year in the Eurovision Song Contest.  The country’s history in the contest is not very promising with their best score throughout their years giving them 12th place.  They have managed to get into the finals most years, but haven’t gotten much farther than that.

This is not to say that a brilliant entry in this year’s contest couldn’t bring them up for a win, but sadly, this year’s selection is not brilliant.  Next Time’s song is uplifting and upbeat with a repetitive, catchy melody, but the key change (modulating up) offers the only variety and there are no real surprises or innovations in “Nesto sto ke ostane.”  This is a love song with no politically charged or controversial lyrics which could be a bonus for Macedonia, but has gained them criticism for lacking novelty.

Macedonia did mix cosmopolitan and local elements through presenting a very global pop/rock song without recognizably national musical elements, but with lyrics in Macedonian.  The song is globally accessibly in sound, but still presents itself as Macedonian through the language choice.

Personally, I think that the second runner up, the song favored by the jury in this year’s Skopje Festival, Naum Petreski & Kaliopi’s song, “Rum Dum Dum” is much more musically interesting and varied than “Nesto sto ke ostane” and might have had a better chance in this year’s Eurovision Song Contest.  However, Next Time is very popular, especially among young Macedonians and has more national support.

FYR Macedonia is one of the only former communist countries to participate in the Eurovision Song Contest.  In Ivan Raykoff and Robert Dean Tobim’s Introduction to the book, A Song For Europe: Popular Music and Politics in the Eurovision Song Contest, they talk about the periphery mindset of Yugoslavia as the only communist country to take part in the contest.  Now, after the fall of the Soviet Union, FYR Macedonia is still very much in the periphery of Europe.  This decentrality is mirrored in their Eurovision performance.  The country has never been central or a main competetor in Eurovision.  In the voting patterns of Macedonia, you can see the connections between Macedonia and other periphery countries of Eastern and Central Europe.  In the last ten years, Macedonia has given the most votes to (in order):

1. Croatia

2. Turkey

3.  Albania

4.  Bosnia and Herzegovina

5.  Romania

They have received the most votes from (in order):

1.  Croatia

2.  Slovenia

3.  Bosnia and Herzegovina

4.  Serbia and Montenegro

5.  Romania

Next Time’s song, “Nesto sko ke ostane” is a 1980s style rock song sung in Macedonian. Here are the lyrics to the song, first in Macedonian Cyrillic, then in English.

Nesto sko ke ostane

Yeah Yeah, ti si od boga najmilo nešto što ke ostane

Da ne si ti, bi nemal za kogo ljubovna pesna da napišam,
Da ne si ti, bi nemal so stop red lugjeto da se pofalam,
Da ne si ti, ni usnive nasmevka nema da gi pokrie,
Ako tvojot glas ne me razbudi, cel tažen mene mi e

Yeah Yeah, ovie oči denje I nokje bi te gledale,
Yeah Yeah, na ovie usni nasmevka čuvam samo za tebe
Yeah Yeah, i radost I taka vikaa bilo pa ke pomine
Yeah Yeah, no ti si od boga najmilo nešto što ke ostane

Vo životot ima i ubavi nešta zatoa sto znae da živee,
Vo ovoj svet ima i skrieni mesta no treba ti da gi prepoznaeš

Yeah Yeah, ovie oci denje i nokje bi te gledale,
Yeah Yeah, na ovie usni nasmevka čuvam samo za tebe
Yeah Yeah, i radost I taka vikaa bilo pa ke pomine
Yeah Yeah, no ti si od boga najmilo nešto što ke ostane

Ljubov ti davam da dobijam nešto, nešto što ke ostane.

Yeah Yeah, i radost i taka vikaa bilo pa ke pomine
Yeah Yeah, no ti si od boga najmilo nešto što ke ostane

Yeah Yeah i radost i taka vikaa bilo pa ke pomine
Yeah Yeah no ti si od boga najmilo nešto što ke ostane

Something that will remain (English translation)

When you’re not here, my days are so lonely,
So lost and gone, I can’t move on
When you’re not here, the words are filled (?)
Can not be said, I feel so bad
When you’re not here, there’s nothing to feel
I can not smile, nothing is real
Everything is wanna see,
These eyes wanna see you
and watch you walking through the night
These lips wanna kiss you
these arms wanna hold you all night
For better, for worse, as the time goes by
we’ll never be the same
You are from heaven
the sweetest thing that will remain

Looking at life
this wonderful thing

keep searching the place that you already know
Together we’ll find our way to go

These eyes wanna see you
and watch you walking through the night
These lips wanna kiss you,
these arms wanna hold you all night
For better, for worse, as the time goes by
we’ll never be the same
You are from heaven
the sweetest thing that will remain

Give you my love through open stream
Something that will remain

For better, for worse, as the time goes by
we’ll never be the same
You are from heaven
the sweetest thing that will remain

For better, for worse, as the time goes by
we’ll never be the same
You are from heaven
the sweetest thing that will remain

Thanks to olivono for these lyrics. (karaok-lyrics.net)

As the Gossip site Heckler Spray describes them, all that Next Time, the band representing FYR Macedonia this year in Eurovision, is good at, is “growing preposterously large hair and performing songs that sound like they should be soundtracking the themetune to an American action show from the late 1980s.”  The site describes Eurovision as “a crappy night of rubbish music” with Macedonia just adding “the usual crap.”  On the other hand, as writer Glenn Walker says on his blog of pop culture reviews, Next Time’s song is “Catchy, not bad.”  For no given reason, he predicts that Macedonia will place 13th in the May 12th Eurovision Semi-Final.  Most blogs and gossip sites don’t think very highly of Next Time’s song.  As Thoroughly Good Blog states, “This song won’t win.  Sorry, FYR Macedonia, but it won’t.”  They describe the entry as a poor quality video with an “almost laughable” attempt to imitate Jon Bon Jovi, and the genre as “entry level rock with a hint of Bruce Springstein.”  Other comments of the Macedonian attempt include, “likely to sink without a trace” and “tragic.”

Despite the pessimistic stance of many towards Macedonia’s 2009 selection, there are still many die hard fans for Next Time and FYR Macedonia.  Many blogs bash the group and the song, but there are still people supporting the group and saying that “Nesto sto ke ostane” is a great song.  Their MySpace page has nearly 50,000 views (See Next Time – MySpace).  Even so, a recent poll found FYR Macedonia’s entry one of the least likely to win this year, followed only by Belgium and the Czech Republic.  Out of 7731 voters, Macedonia received 43, less than 1% of the total votes.

During the selection of the national representative of FYR Macedonia to the Eurovision Song Contest, there are rounds of finals as a part of Macedonia’s Skopje Music Festival.  The Skopje Music Festival was started in the Universal Hall of Skopje, Yugoslavia in 1968.

Universal Hall – Skopje, FYR Macedonia

The Skopje Festival ran from 1968 to 1980 in Yugoslavia and hosted some of the biggest names in Macedonian music such as Slave Dimitrov, Zafir Hadzimanov, and Nina Spirova along with various Yugoslavian musicians.  Here’s a compilation of music from the first Skopje Fest in 1968 including songs by Saska Petkovska (Bakni me), Slave Dimitrov (Delfina), Violeta Tomovska (Ne znam sto ne’ ceka), Zafir Hadzimanov (Zemi mome Makedonce), and Janko Uzunov (Magdalena).

From 1968 to 1980, the Skopje Festival was a competition.  In 1991, Macedonia peacefully gained independence from Yugoslavia and the Skopje Festival was restarted as a Macedonian festival in 1994.  In 1996 it became the qualifier for the Eurovision song contest, though FYR Macedonia didn’t qualify to compete until 1998.  Before the Skopje Festival was used to qualify artists to Eurovision, judges used a controversial point award system to declare winners.  When they began to use the festival for Eurovision qualification, the judging became the conventional announcement of only the top three groups.  Still, the decision is not transparent — neither the jury’s votes, nor the televoting results are made public.  In 2004, 2005, 2006, and 2007, there were changes made to the selection process and the Skopje Festival was not included.  This year, the Skopje Festival was used to choose Macedonia’s representative using two semi-final rounds and a final night with the winners decided through a jury and televoting (fifty percent of each).  The final scores for this year’s participants were:

1. Next Time – Nešto Što Ke Ostane – 19 points
   
2. Naum Petreski & Kaliopi – Rum Dum Dum – 18 points
3. Risto Samardžiev & Zoran Džorlev – 103 Beli Lebedi – 17 points
4. Vlatko Lozanoski – Blizku Do Mene – 16 points
5. Sleng – Gengsta Oro – 13 points
6. Vlatko Ilievski – Najbogat Vo Svet – 8 points
7. Andrijana Janevska - Drvo Bez Koren – 6 points
8. Aleksandar Belov – Sastani, Solzi Izbriši – 6 points
9. Daniel – Sila Na Ljubovta - 5 points
10. Bravo Band – Devojko – 3 points
11. Kristijan – Nema Da Zboram – 2 points
12. Rok Agresori – Ding Dong – 2 points
13. Proekt Makedonija – Pomalku Naivno – 1 point
14. Dejan Trifunovski – Ljubovta Doaga – 0 points
    
15. Verče Pandilovska – Severno Od Mene, Južno Od Tebe – 0 points
16. Kostadin Papa – Za Nea Postojam – 0 points

FYR Macedonia, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, has been participating in the Eurovision Song Contest since 1998.  They submitted a song in 1996, but it didn’t make it through the qualifying rounds into the finals.  Here is the 1996 song was “Samo ti” (Only You) by Kaliopi Gril.

Kaliopi is a Macedonian pop singer songwriter who started training music at a very young age.  1996 was not the first time she participated in Eurovision.  In 1987, her group, Kaliopi, was a part of the Yugoslav Eurovision Contest, coming in 10th place with the song “Emanuel.”

Since 1998, FYR Macedonia has consistently qualified for the finals of Eurovision except in 2008, when they were beaten out by Sweden.  Their entry that year was the Tamara, Vrcak, and Adrian song, “Let Me Love You.”

This was one of the times that Macedonia’s entry was sung in English.  The others were “Life” by Tose Proeski in 2004,

“Make My Day” by Martin Vucic in 2005,

And “Ninanajna” by Elena Risteska in 2006 who sang in both Macedonian and English.

This song received the highest rating of any Macedonian Eurovision entry, placing 12th in the finals in Athens, Greece.  Elena Risteska is a Macedonian pop star who started out doing drama and taking part in Folk music and dance ensembles.  She gained fame when she won the Macedonian reality TV show “Play – Search for a Star.”  Since the 2006 Eurovision Contest, she also wrote the lyrics for the 2007 entry, “Belo e se” (Everything is White) performed by Lambe Alabakoski which came in third place in the national competition.  The representative to Eurovision that year was Karolina Goceva with the song “Mojot Svet” (My World).

This year, FYR Macedonia will be represented in the Eurovision Song Contest by Next Time, performing “Neshto Shto Ke Oshtan.”

Next Time is a rock duo made up of twin brothers, Martin and Stefan Filipovski.  They were chosen on February 22 out of 16 finalists in the Skopje Festival 2009.  They won by just one point over the second place group, Naum Petreski & Kaliopi, performing “Rum Dum Dum.”

“Rum Dum Dum” was prefered by the jury, but the public favored Next Time’s song.

More information on the history of FYR Macedonia in the Eurovision Song Contest coming soon!

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