Staying in the Balkans, it’s the third up of the five ex-Yugoslav countries in this year’s contest. Last year, Croatia gave us a monstrosity that was loathed by the fan base (including me) yet somewhat predictably somehow managed to go on and do well in the grand final! Can their effort this year (a much classier affair) repeat that success of last year?

As you can tell from the ranking, this song has found favour with me – it’s classy (for the most part) and has a hook/riff that really does do its job of hooking well. I have no idea what this will be like live though as Franka hasn’t attended any of the preview events (and this was also an internal selection so there’s no live performance from a national final). My one gripe with this is the spoken part of it, which does sound, well, crazy! But it’s just a small part of the 3 minute songs.

I think that this might be catch it while you can in the semis though – while I may like it, it hasn’t had much traction among the eurofans but you never know what might take off once it gets to the Lisbon stage. There was a brouhaha over the music of the song being sold to and released earlier by someone else but I think that has blown over now. Regular points givers to Croatia, Macedonia, Austria and Switzerland are all in the same semi-final, but I think it’s going to be tough ask for Croatia to qualify this year. 

Official music video:

Croatia at the Eurovision Song Contest:

First entered: 1993

Appearances (excluding this year): 23

Best result: 4th in 1996 and 1999

Last year’s result: 13th