Latvia 2024: Dons with ‘Hollow’
Supernova this year proved a formality as Dons came through and will head to Malmo trying to end Latvia’s terrible run of form at Eurovision with them not seeing a final since the last time Sweden hosted in 2016:
There were 3 entries selected on Saturday night and the order itself in which these reviews come out are generally indicative of a. general odds expectations, b. chronological order and c. how much I am looking forward to doing the review/how much there is to say. That this is third out, despite me realistically having also had weeks to draft this review given the certainty of selection tells you a lot about how interesting a topic this is. So interesting that this tangent of an introduction might be longer than the actual review.
Dons sings well and ‘Hollow’ is a solid composition with a decent hook. I actually enjoy this when it’s on but it’s never an entry I’d vote for in amongst, well, just more interesting fare. I also don’t find our man a particularly engaging or telegenic performer to want to vote for him. Going back to the good vs different spectrum brought up in the Ireland review, this scores equally as poorly, and overall perhaps even worse. I don’t imagine this will get much attention from SVT and there’s not much that can be done to liven things up anyway through staging unless Latvia have a budget to go the cliche live backing choir route. We are very reliant on Dons selling this and to me he just doesn’t.
Latvia can be thankful to be in the second half of semi 2 but as usual they are lacking much support with only fellow baltics Estonia for company. There so far is a usp for a sensible song here but from what we’ve heard from Belgium, Mustii might be on similar ground. Qualification is touch and go for now but if this makes the final he is an easy entry for jurors to consistently rank 5th-10th. A good jury score to be followed up by single figures in the televote would be my guess there if he gets through. Small top 10 chances should the juries continue to lack options and this improves.
Personal Rating: 6/10
Competitive Rating: 5/10
Early Prediction: Semi 2 9th-13th, 14th-19th if in the final