Latvia 2025: Tautumeitas with ‘Bur Man Laimi’

After Dons success in qualifying last year, Latvia have followed up his solid male ballad with, well, I’m not entirely sure…

Fun behind the scenes fact: in the last 30 days this site has received a full three visits from Latvia, that's less than Kuwait or Namibia. This is good news to hopefully minimise any hate mail for this review.

I don’t like to pile on the ethnic numbers for three reasons. Firstly, I tend to be pretty receptive to those, indeed my personal 1 and 2 of the year at this stage are Albania and Greece. Secondly, on principle and for the interest of a diverse year I’d rather a country send something regionally identifiable, at least every so often, and it has been a while for Latvia. And thirdly, it’s just a bit more impolite when a country shows of a bit of culture and tradition to then have a go at it.

That paragraph is of course preparation for me having a go at this. Bur Man Laimi is practically unlistenable to me. 30 seconds is more than enough before skipping through and realising there’s not much variation in the whole song. I don’t intend to listen to this again until rehearsals or the semi depending on what access we have this year. It's just a very difficult and unpleasant listen.

Of course I know very little of what this is supposed to be, but I also don’t really care, and nor will any viewer. If I am having a hard time with this, and the fans in general are mixed, I can only imagine the casual reaction will be to skip this.

For what it is worth, I take it’s performed well and there is potential for the visuals to look nice.

The closest comparison I think of is Tulia from Poland who failed to qualify in 2019 albeit with a pretty good 60 televoting points. Most of those however where received by diaspora countries (which Latvia lacks) as well as the now absent Hungary and Belarus. Czechia awarded that 7 points whilst Lithuania are here and should be fans of this but beyond that pair this sound may be a very hard sell and I’d argue this is far worse than Pali Se. Throw in the first half draw and I don't see this qualifying. There’s not much point discussing the jury appeal in my view but this was 3rd in its own national final, and there won’t be much respect shown I don't feel if this somehow does qualify.

Personal Rating: 2/20

Staging Potential: 13/20

Televote Potential: 4/20

Jury Potential: 4/20

Track Record: 3/20

Total Rating: 25/100

Early Prediction: Semi 2 12th-15th