The Xtra Files: We Review Romania’s ‘Yodel It!’ by Ilinca and Alex Florea!

Welcome to The Xtra Files, our new series which will give you an insight into what the team at escXtra think of your favourite entries into this year’s contest! Today, we review Romania.

Now that all the songs have been released, we are able to review each and every one of them. Our honest and brutal reviews will keep you entertained until the rehearsals start in May! We will also each give a score out of 10 for every entry, and create an escXtra leaderboard of the entries! You can see our preview reviews here.
Today, it is the turn of the Romanian entry, ‘Yodel It!’ by Ilinca and Alex Florea, to be reviewed by Hlynur, Nathan, Nick, Rodrigo, Sagheer, and Yassia. Let’s get started!

The Reviews

Hlynur

I am honestly disapointed, couldn’t it at least have been in Romanian language? How do people come up with these things! It just too weird for me. But since Romania is my soft spot I forgive them. Plus I like the singers.

Nathan

A slice of hip hop fun mixed with a pop chorus and a yodel. Yes please, thank you Romania.

Nick

I love a good yodel, so this should be right up my street. But I hate rap, so where does that leave me? Right in the middle. I grew tired of this really quickly. It’s a three minute gimmick and I just hope this won’t do that well… An original idea, but a tiring way of presenting it. I find myself skipping this a lot nowadays.

Rodrigo

This represents everything that’s wrong with the contest. Mix and match stuff that simply don’t go. Yodel for no apparent reason, torture the listener for 3 minutes. One of Romania’s poorest attempts (and they produced Cezar). For further information please see my thoughts on Croatia

Sagheer

When ‘Yodel it’ won ‘Selectia Nationale’ I was truly in love with the song. Soon after, my love for the song started to fizzle out, but after seeing them perform live at the London Eurovision Party my initial love for the song was reignited and it’s one of the few entries that stay stuck in my head. With the right staging I think it could bring Romania back into the Top 10.

Yassia

I simply don’t like this music style. I don’t think that Eurovision audience is going to like it much either. Let’s see if I’m right.

Scores

When we remove the top score of 9.5 and the lowest score of 0, the average score for Romania is 5.12.
(Removing the top score and the lowest score helps to make the average score more reliable and less affected by outliers.)

Leaderboard

Romania reaches 30th place in our leaderboard with a score of 5.12.

1. France – 9.04
2. Italy – 9.03
3. Azerbaijan – 8.00
4. Sweden – 7.77
5. Belarus – 7.75
6. Iceland – 7.46
7. Australia – 7.25
8. Israel – 7.21
9. Serbia – 7.08
10. Estonia – 7.07
11. Switzerland – 6.96
12. Denmark – 6.83
13. Armenia – 6.80
14. Portugal – 6.79
15. Hungary – 6.79
16. Germany – 6.59
17. Austria – 6.58
18. Moldova – 6.58
19. Greece – 6.54
20. Norway – 6.33
21. Latvia – 6.25
22. Czech Republic – 6.25
23. United Kingdom – 6.00
24. Finland – 5.71
25. Ireland – 5.54
26. The Netherlands – 5.33
27. Albania – 5.21
28. Poland – 5.13
29. Ukraine – 5.13
30. Romania – 5.12
31. Malta – 4.25
32. San Marino – 3.92
33. Georgia – 3.91
34. Montenegro – 3.33
35. Croatia – 2.71
36. Slovenia – 2.13

Tomorrow, we will review Cyprus.
Do you agree with our reviews of the Romania? What are your thoughts on Ilinca and Alex Florea’s ”Yodel It!’? Let us know in the comments!