London Greek Radio

Maria Elena Kyriakou with soaring ballad ‘One Last Breath’ will go on to fly the Greek flag at the massively historic 60th Eurovision Song Contest this May. After topping the public and jury voting of the EuroSong Final airing 4th March, our female soloist’s melodic track will go on to represent Hellas, our tune, is obviously more of a slow speed feel than the bulk of their efforts recently. Tony Neophytou reviews the highlights leading up to selecting our 36th Greek song representative to date…

It’s 10 year’s since the advent of the winning ‘My Number One’ of Elena Paparizou with almost consistently unbroken Top 10’s, and it goes almost without saying the Greek nation has strong back-bone in Eurovision successes and results. 

The 31-year-old singer actually is a Cypriot born and bred in Larnaca and co-writes with Efthivoulos Theocharous and lyrics penned by Vaggelis Konstantinidis, and Evelina Tziora. Her record label Minos-EMI Universal is bidding obviously, for a decent result wise outcome which is aiming at realising qualification hopes for the team.

She is a doubtlessly very pretty and classy and is evoking much in the way of feeling in her song. The whole thing starts a little silently with emotive piano, and peppered with strings adding to the atmosphere of our tune, which steadily builds in a fairly solid progressive ballad way.

In my opinion our effort has qualifying potential to the final all the way from the first Semi-Final where it’ll be battling really hard from it’s specifically, 6th draw for a rightfully deserved place for the finale night. 

Cypriot Maria is the reigning champion of ‘The Voice’ after proving triumphant for last year’s Greek talent show format. Maria Elena also this March initiated a long run at the Posidonio which is a very popular bouzoukia in Athens, appearing with Giannis Ploutarhos and Kostas Martakis all the way to August with only the mini-‘break’ for Eurovision interceding to affect Maria’s domestic music schedule this spring.

Our hosts Mary Sinatsaki and Ntoretta Papadimitriou for two hours of the transmission live at the Enastron music hall. They sung with former entrant, Freaky Fortune ‘Rise up’ in the interval act. Celebrating, the biggest moments of Greek entry’s ever was Boys and Noise cover rendition to Antique’s ‘Die For You’ rekindling our memory banks of 2001’s Top 3 result that year. 

First act was C:Real with ‘Crash and Burn’ their lively rock-pop style entry was fusing solo bouzouki in the bridge section of the track to give that Greek touch.

Thomai Apergi and Legend, with ‘Jazz Kai Sirtaki’, all Greek language song was certainly full of happy feeling, insipidly fun, with very fast, rousing bouzouki featuring at the very climatic break-down of the up-tempo number.

Hopeful Barrice presented his Greek pop ditty  ‘Ela’ combining… lively  bouzouki Sirtaki in the break.

Shaya’s ‘Sunshine’ was a fairly up-beat effort fusing strong elements of Greek Clarinet with a very exciting bridge part of the track – just all Klarino. This reviewer, LGR dj, is adding the lively cut to the track-listing favourites of this year’s summer hits. 

Elena Paparizou almost inevitably sung a new mix of ‘My Number One’ with all five of the competing artists relieving, in a small way, that occasion, sweeping us back exactly to the momentous win. Paparizou also covered Austria’s entry ‘Rise Like a Phoenix’ and new track releases ‘Love Till It’s Over’ and ‘Aggeloi Den Klanei’.

The video footage of Bessi Agyraki, Elpida, Alex Kostala, Constantinos Christoforou and Elena Paparizou also a highlight gave our competitors really top tips for how to succeed in the song contest itself. 

Thanos Kalliris and Kings covered 1987’s ‘Stop’ number and Giorkas Lorkas with his ‘Watch My Dance’ zeimbekiko filled entry of 2011 was joined on stage by the Children’s SOS Choir for his act. The event specifically re-united boy-band One with the Cypriot’s highly-ranked Top 6th result with the ‘Gimme’ song.  

The jurors consisted of Nikos Ksanthoulis, composer and director of music at NERIT, composers Mixalis Oikonomou, Giorgos Niarxos and Tzik Nakasian, also Litsa Piskera (former public relations of ex-ERT), Reggina Kouri public relations of Mad TV, and formerly Greek act Marianna Efstatiou in 1989 and 1996 also composed the full judges that night.

Cypriot John Karayiannis proved his ballad savvy mettle with a modest performance of ‘One Thing I Should Have Done’.

Greece will compete in Semi-Final one on Tuesday 19th May, jostling for one of the Top 10 relevant qualifying places in the Final airing on Saturday 23rd May at the Wiener Stadthalle in Vienna.

Article written by Tony Neophytou