London Greek Radio

Tonight Cyprus competes in the second Eurovision Semi-Final to win a place in Saturday’s live Grand Final of Eurovision’s massively historic 60th at Vienna’s Wiener Stadthalle Arena.

John Karayiannis, a 20 year-old singer from Limassol, will fly the Cypriot flag with his melodic ballad ‘One Thing I Should Have‘. Singing, 15th, he’s performing this to a minimalist staging, which feels like it captivates really solidly well. The song’s intro is pretty ace we think, there’s all black and white screen for the first verse and chorus, with mini-explosions of colour in the back-drop itself as the tune climaxes, which is very effective.

I am sure Team JK and all of the delegation with Evi Papamichael and Klitos Klitou and so forth, will try their best to create the right sort of emotive atmosphere for his song.

Our tune was penned by Mike Connaris, a London Cypriot song-writer he’s previously brought the island Top 5th, to equal our best ever, with 2004’s Lisa Andreas ballad ‘Stronger Every Minute’ and upping the ante this dynamic duo of Mike and John will be hoping to bank on a qualifier with this good modern effort.

If you look at the statistics, a lowly 33% of all Cypriot songs actually have qualified or broke out of the semis, in the last decade, which obviously is disappointing. As Cyprus’ last qualifier was of course, 2012’s Ivi Adamou with ‘La La Love’, knowing this useful trivia it will surely make us all feel a nervy sense of excitement at 9:45pm of who’s going to make it…

Having said that, this sweet track is both strong and solid with a radio friendly feel to it, John’s sincerity/honesty and sort of fragile vulnerability, adding to his clear tone and faultless vocals, giving it much useful good to the song’s theme of regret of the one thing he should have done.

John revealed to LGR the thinking behind the staging which cultivates precisely the right mood for his story-telling way he goes about this. ”It’s a very simple ballad, and the simplicity is something that is going to be emphasised, I want to create the atmosphere that’s appealing to the viewer’s attention”.

John’s signature look is the thick framed black spectacles and he owns exactly five pairs of glasses he said, and of course his ‘look’ brings that individual touch to his visual aspect to the song.

Mike elated at his second Eurovision explained how he’s feeling up-beat about his adventure as he puts it to lgr.co.uk. About John’s musical talent, he said, ”He is such a young talent with an incredible voice – so cool and calm on stage – nothing fazes him… and if we can get the staging right, there’s no reason why Cyprus can’t be hosting ESC in 2016! Now wouldn’t that be something!”

John was introduced to Mike by Christos Kyriakides, who runs a successful music school of the same name in Limassol. Mike was very impressed with John’s voice and invited him to London. After getting to know John, and working closely in the studio with him, Mike set about writing a song especially for John. The song is about regret, but with a twist because it’s not until the end of the song that the real truth comes out. It makes you realise that in a relationship you should look back with no regrets, and always be honest.

Well, Cyprus’ robust entry is our absolute favourite for tonight’s semi and there it will muscle it out with 17 countries and our tips for potential qualifiers are Sweden, Norway, Latvia, Azerbaijan, Slovenia, Lithuania, Montenegro, Israel then we have Ireland, Switzerland, Portugal, Czech Republic, Poland, San Marino, Malta, Iceland.

The second live Semi-Final, which you can watch on BBC 3 from 8pm until 10pm, has UK tele-voting plus jury deciding qualifiers, to complete the final line-up which already has Greece’s Cypriot Maria Elena Kyriakou with ‘One Last Breath’ making it in the first semi on Tuesday night.

Best of luck to John our Cypriot hopeful… Fingers crossed… qualifying, pretty please…

Article written by Tony Neophytou