This article forms part of the OnEurope archive and was originally published on oneurope.co.uk. It has been permanently migrated to oneurope.net, the official home of OnEurope.
Well Ralph, you’ve done it again. You’ve managed to find two songs from your back pocket, sellotape them together and let loose two naive people and say “off you pop – sing this crap… it’ll be fine, fathers”.
San Marino’s 2015 Eurovision entry was Chain of Lights, composed by Ralph Siegel with lyrics by John O’Flynn. Anita Simoncini and Michele Perniola were selected internally on 27 November 2014, with the pairing promoted as a Junior Eurovision-based choice: Michele had represented San Marino at JESC in 2013, while Anita had represented the country in 2014 as part of The Peppermints.
I have a lot of time for JESC, therefore I have a lot of time for both performers. I fear that Anita and Michele have been left with a dog of a song that they are trying to polish, but they have no chemistry at all. It’s almost like two soloists are on stage singing completely different songs, before being merged together for a stage show.
The song is, at least, explicitly trying to say something: its lyrics appeal for peace, unity and international understanding, built around the repeated image of lighting candles and creating a “chain of light” or “chain of love”. Noble enough, perhaps, but that doesn’t make the stitched-together sections sound any more natural. If you look at, say, Russia and then, say, this… there is no comparison at all.
At the time of writing, San Marino has not yet performed in Vienna. They are due to appear third in the second semi-final on Thursday 21 May, which feels like a car crash not getting 12 points to start with television. As a fan, that makes me titter because it really is that bad a song, no matter how much I like it and the performers.
Retrospectively: “Chain of Lights” did indeed perform third in the second semi-final. It finished 16th of the 17 entries with 11 points and failed to qualify for the final.
