We love a trier here at Eurovision, and Stefan has tried to represent Estonia on three previous occasions but on his fourth attempt he’s won the opportunity to go to the contest. After all that effort, we’ll be keeping fingers crossed he can continue his success and at 11th place in my own rankings, he only narrowly misses out on a top 10 and is firmly among my personal favourites. Can he do the same for Estonia at the contest proper?

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Estonia select their entry via their national selection show, Eesti Laul, a format familiar for Stefan after his unsuccessful attempts in 2018, 2019 and 2020. He reached the super final (the final three) in both 2018 and 2019, but it was this year that he was not let down in the super final, winning it by a huge margin. The ever smiling Stefan seemed so delighted to have won and has been enjoying his Eurovision journey ever since, with attendance at almost all the pre-parties.

The song, “Hope” is a very much in the spaghetti western genre of music, yet it’s wholly Estonian in its creation – it was written and composed by Stefan and a fellow Estonian composer and producer. It makes for a really catchy song though, and while it’s in many ways quite a stereotypical “Western” sound, it doesn’t feel twee or like a pastiche. Stefan’s deep voice vocal really suits this and my only minor gripe is that he doesn’t always enunciate words really clearly, but he always puts in a very solid live vocal.

This seems a really solid entry from Estonia – it’s really catchy, has a good tempo, and blessed with a very handsome singer who can carry off a good live vocal. All this suggests we should be seeing Estonia on the Saturday night in the grand final. It’s unlikely to be a contender for the win, but I’d expect this to pick up a respectable score, not least some votes from Armenia as Stefan is of Armenian origin.

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