The Czech Republic are relative newcomers to the contest, joining in 2007 and had three awful results; they then took a break and returned in 2015, with much stronger songs and performers, and have been making progress since with a final qualification in 2016, and then again in 2018 where Mikolas Josef gave them their first top ten result with modern funky pop. Can Lake Malawi continue to maintain their newfound success?
The Czechs stuck with their online national selection (which they also did last year), though as well as an online vote, they also had some international jurors (which included past Eurovision participants) with Lake Malawi winning with their indie/synth/wonky pop song “Friend of a Friend”. I actually initially preferred the song that was the runner up, but this has grown and grown on me, especially on seeing the slick and inventive official music video, and how they have performed live.
Lake Malawi formed several years ago and have performed mainly in the Czech Republic but did spend some time in the UK and have performed there. This might be one of the reasons behind lead singer Albert’s London/estuary English accent that you can hear in the song, and also in interviews he gives in English (though it does seem to revert to a Czech accent if not being interviewed by native English speakers!)
“Friend of a Friend” is ludicrously catchy and mixes a 1980s bassline with a more modern sound that works really well being incredibly catchy and uptempo, poppy with that clever music video. It works very well live, and they have a real natural live band feel and it’s great to see the Czechs maintaining this broad modern pop and a song that doesn’t feel like it’s been written solely for the contest. I’m confident that this will qualify (and it has a decent running order space) and while it may be hard to replicate the success of “Lie to Me“, two final appearances in a row will be great progress.
Official music video:
Live at London Eurovision Party:
My preview video:
Czech Republic in the Eurovision Song Contest
First entered: 2007
Appearances (excluding this year): 7
Best result: 6th in 2018
Last year’s result: 6th