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.
Yeah, that’s decent enough.
This review was written before Azerbaijan’s performances in the 2015 Eurovision Song Contest. Elnur Hüseynov was due to sing Hour of the Wolf in the second semi-final in Vienna on 21 May, starting 11th. The entry was internally selected by Azerbaijan’s broadcaster İctimai TV and announced in March. The song was written by Lina Hansson, Nicklas Lif, Nicolas Rebscher and Sandra Bjurman; whether the title has a precise literal meaning remains pleasingly unclear.
The wolf business was not entirely a figment of my imagination. Elnur’s staging used a dark forest and night-sky setting, a lunar eclipse or moon on the LED screen, dry ice and two dancers, Julia Spiesser and Lukas McFarlane, whose movements were animalistic and wolf-like. And, as later rehearsal coverage confirmed, the moon really did turn red, then white, before transforming into a flying dove at the end. So my uncertainty was understandable, but my suspicion that this might be better off without the dove was not exactly prophetic.
The 1986 comparison is to Denmark’s Du Er Fuld Af Løgn, performed by Lise Haavik and Trax at Bergen, where it finished sixth with 77 points. It is an old-song earworm comparison, not some mysterious connection between the two entries.
As for that top-five prediction: no. Retrospectively, Azerbaijan qualified from the second semi-final in 10th place with 53 points, then performed 24th in the Grand Final on 23 May and finished 12th with 49 points. That was still a final place in the Eurovision Song Contest’s 60th-anniversary year, but it did not continue Azerbaijan’s run of top-ten finishes from 2008 to 2013. After 22nd place in 2014, 12th was respectable; it just wasn’t the top five I was seeing through the dry ice.
This review was brought to you in association with Things You’d Only Ever Say At ESC.
