Switzerland 2022: Marius Bear with ‘Boys Do Cry’

Marius Bear has been entrusted by Switzerland’s comprehensive internal selection to keep their purple patch of the last few years alive:

This is a real disappointment from Switzerland. It's clearly not a bad song but the margin between success and failure, ‘emotional’ and ‘boring’ is a narrow one and this falls on the wrong side. It's genuine, but it doesn't feel so, its hard not to draw comparisons to Victoria and the male version of a style becoming a bit too common in Eurovision to retain the authentic vibe it's going for.

The message is good, but the fact it's required makes it a hard sell. “Soft millennial” might be a tag to easily thrown at this, as I believe it was with Victoria and worse with him being a guy and European audiences frankly having their own issues at this time. I'm not bashing this, but there's a lot that might make this hard to connect with for the general public. I don’t think it plays into that backdrop and instead it's right message, wrong time and once the emotion is stripped out this is just nothing. It struggles particularly with the structure. I like to see countries go for something a bit different but this is far too monotonous and one note for too long. It’s not particularly a compositional problem, but it is a competitive one with a sort of ‘alright, heard it all’ feeling halfway through

I'm not convinced with Marius in general and Switzerland find themselves with one of the weakest male ballads in a packed field (though not in his semi). This could still get overlooked in that first half however and at this stage I make 7/8 stronger and just 2 certainly weaker so we’re in classic “borderline/more likely out territory” with a big jury push vital. If this does get through we're looking at a bottom 5 I fear.

Personal Rating: 5/10

Competitive Rating: 4/10

Early Prediction: Semi 1 10th-14th, 21st-25th if in the final.