EuroVision ’18 Song By Song: “Who We Are” by Jessika feat Jenifer Brening, San Marino
eCinemaOne, The Kirkham Report, and Planet BiblioMusica will have daily coverage of the days counting down to the Eurovision Song Contest 2018!
Over the coming weeks, sometimes more than once a day, we will bring you daily previews of the contest, spotlighting each of the songs individually in random order, where they come from, who will be performing them, and more, as well as some historical info on the contest and some of the past winners and participants.
Next up on our Song-By-Song preview is the official entry from San Marino, “Who We Are” by Jessika featuring Jenifer Brening, written by Mathias Strasser, Zoë Straub, Christof Straub, and Lorenzo Salvatori (music), and Mathias Strasser, Zoë Straub, Christof Straub, Stefan Moessle, Jenifer Brening (lyrics). The song is performed in English. Jessika (last name Muscat) is a well known singer and actress, best known for her role on the Maltese soap Ħbieb u Għedewwa. German-based rapper Brening is a talent show alumni from her country. Jessika has made several attempts to represent her country in previous contests and also in the Junior EuroVision contest, but has not been picked until this year The song will be performed 4th in the competition order on the second semi-final on May 10.
I really love the sentiment behind this fun dance number; I wish it were a bit less generic. I love the song’s message — be who you are and don’t let anyone bully you, don’t take any crap — sound advice much of the time. And I LOVE the little robots dancing on the pedestals in the video, The song is well performed, but it sounds too much like other numbers in the competition, although the song could still improve on San Marino’s spotty track record. And it could make an appearance on the American dance charts, but I don’t really think it would go much further than that.
San Marino is one of those little European conclaves that tourists flock to — the entire country is only TWENTY FOUR SQUARE MILES and is contained entirely within Italy, but they are completely autonomous, currently making them the smallest country represented at EuroVision (in comparison, among the countries of Europe, only Monaco, which hasn’t participated since 2006, and Vatican City, which has never participated, are smaller). They made their debut in 2008, and have made 8 appearances in the contest. They have qualified for the final only once, in 2014, where they finished 24th. They DO hold a EuroVision record, as strange as it seems — Valentina Monetta, who represented the country three years in a row, in 2012, 2013, and 2014, and also in 2017 with Jimmie Wilson, holds the title for the female artist with the most participations in the contest with four…pretty wild…
Here’s the official music video — get inspired by it…and hope it does well…
Join eCinemaOne, The Kirkham Report, and Planet BiblioMusica each day through the finals on May 12 — be sure to check each site, because some of the features will be exclusive to just one of the sites! The daily artist and song profiles will appear on each site, with some past winners and historical info coming to TKR and PlanetBM in the next week or so as I complete my research!
In case you’re interested, I will post my list of all 43 songs in the order of my favorites at the end of our song by song preview in early May, so keep tuned in! We’re featuring THREE songs a day the rest of this week, FOUR songs each this weekend, and will wrap things up with three final songs next Monday!
If you’re reading our posts on our Medium site, you may want to switch to one of the main sites — we’re having issues over there due to the multple blogs we’re posting on. If you don’t want to miss anything, check out eCO, TKR, or PlanetBM!
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Catch all the official EuroVision action at their official Website and on their official YouTube channel! And don’t forget to watch the show May 12 on LogoTV!
Originally published at eCinemaOne.
