Czech Republic 2023: Vesna with ‘My Sister's Crown’
After a bit of a delay, Vesna have been officially acknowledged as the Czech entry for Liverpool:
There's a few reasons behind enthusiasm for the Czech Republic
- The televote has been trending towards different sounds.
- There's both the anti-war (to anyone not looking really super hard to be offended) and feminism angles here.
- The Fandom appreciates it and will help keep the hype train going.
- There's no sure 500 pt song elsewhere yet
This does combine to make quite a strong package on paper and I do understand the arguments here. I don't see the win, but would rather wait for something I do believe in to show up before dismissing and selling the pre-song green although there's something about it all that feels artificial and calculated.
An AI tasked with finding a Eurovision winning entry given key words of recent successes would come up with this. That's not a criticism of the song which is quite good but more about the impression I get and why I can't get behind it as enthusiastically as some- spend enough time analysing entries and it's harder to take this at face value.
Apart from Sweden who are yet to select- the market's current favourites (Ukraine, Finland, Norway) are all far from jury winners under the usual assumptions and neither is this. I have my doubts on all of these and I seriously question if we have heard any of the jury top 3 or 4 entries yet. For my money, of those Vesna is the least reliable and predictable on the televote.
Part of that is in coming from the Czech Republic in not having a natural base vote and less of a consistent track record. If this was the Ukrainian entry, we'd obviously all be much more enthusiastic about it's chances, but that extends to normal times too.
Vesna is a bit of an ensemble and mix of styles and these have proven difficult to stage coherently regardless (Armenia 2015 and Bulgaria 2018 spring to mind). They will be better however than the clip included from their national final in the corner of a TV studio.
Lastly, the comparative entries being cited (namely 'Shum' and 'In Corpore Sano') were successful, but nowhere even close to winning, despite maxing out their chances through staging, good running order positions and coming from diaspora/bloc vote countries.
Is 'My Sister's Crown' significantly stronger than those or are the circumstances so much more favourable? I'm far from convinced and these entries that are pushing the boat out are starting to look in the way of each other- perhaps we're heading into a year where something more 'normal' (and good) is therefore the standout.
A winning chance of around 5% seems reasonable but there's lots of room for this to underperform. I should also add, the whole “controversy” that has popped up involving who else but Ukraine feels the tamest issue ever, but it would be nice not to have. If there is any impact on their chances, it's not a good one.
Personal Rating: 6/10
Competitve Rating: 7/10
Early Prediction: Semi Final 3rd-6th, Final 6th-10th.