Editorials & Opinion

Xtra’s Pick of the 21st Century

It’s finally Friday, and to see you into the weekend, we’re travelling back to fairly recent Eurovision past, and bringing you a classic pick, which today is brought to you by Yassia.

Latvia 2005: Walters & Kazha – The War Is Not Over (5th place)

Valters & Kaža, or Valters Fridenbergs and Karlis Bumeisters, from Latvia with their song “The War Is Not Over” are the heroes of this week’s pick of the 21st century. This young blond duo represented their home country at the Eurovision 2005. These guys got the 10th place in the semi-final, but it didn’t prevent them from being one of the favorites of this year’s contest final in Kiev (Ukraine).

The song “The War Is Not Over” is a slow ballad, the key message of which is “everyone can be a star if only we would start believe in dreams, believe in who we are”.  Besides, no doubt that the finger-speech usage at the end of the song performance touched the feelings of the audience. The duo could even get a higher position in the final, but Valters lost his voice during the after-party after the semi-final and it was hard for him to recover fully, as the final took place only two days after the semi-final. For this reason, Valters was not able to bring his A-game to the stage, which definitely adversely affected the vocal performance. Nevertheless, the 5th place still appeared to be a great result for Latvia, as even now it is the third-best result of this county (after Brainstorm 2000 and Marie N 2002) on the Eurovision stage since the beginning of its participation in the Contest in 2000.

Conclusion: Cute smiling guys with pleasant voices playing the guitars + lovely meaningful song + simple and touching performance = the 5th place in the final of the Eurovision Song Contest 2005.

As for the “after Eurovision career”, Valters wanted to represent Latvia at the Eurovision Song Contest 2009, but he failed to qualify in the Latvian finals. Valters & Kaža also provided the Latvian commentary for the Eurovision 2011. Besides, Valters presented the voting results on behalf of Latvia at the Contest in 2012. I hope we will see Valters & Kaža or at least one of them on the Eurovision stage again in the future.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Back to top button