The Xtra Files: We Review F.Y.R. Macedonia’s ‘Dance Alone’ by Jana Burčeska!

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 F.Y.R. Macedonia.

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 Macedonian entry, ‘Dance Alone’ by Jana Burčeska, to be reviewed by Katarina, Nathan, Nick, Ryan, Sagheer, and Wivian. Let’s get started!

The Reviews

Katarina

I am absolutely in love with Jana and her song! It’s catchy, it’s current, and even the lyrics are good and fit the mood of the song. Whenever this comes on shuffle I feel like standing up and dancing, even though I am sure my dancing isn’t nearly as aesthetically pleasing as Jana’s in the music video.

Nathan

WHAT A SONG. Utterly spellbinding, catchy, instantaneous. F.Y.R. Macedonia have arrived in the 21st Century for the first time in terms of their Eurovision entries. I wish Jana the best as this should comfortably become Macedonia’s highest placing finish, a record held by Elena Risteska for “Ninanajna” in 2006.

Nick

F.Y.R. Macedonia is a country often featuring at the top of my list, but hardly ever for being contemporary, current and relevant. This, however, is all of the above. Robyn would’ve been grateful for this song and so should we all be. Absolutely astonishing how F.Y.R. Macedonia have produced such a great pop tune. This is the way to go, this is what I want for the contest.

Ryan

F.Y.R. Macedonia’s best entry ever. This song seems to straddle a variety of genres, a bit of electro, a bit 80s, a bit pop, a bit dance but it feels extremely cohesive. As well as one of the catchiest choruses with “woahs” and claps in all the right places, Jana also has one of the best music videos this year. As long as the live performance is up to standard it is surely heading to the final.

Sagheer

F.Y.R. Macedonia does not have the best track record at Eurovision with only two qualifications since 2007. ‘Dance Alone’ is easily one of their best entries ever and it deserves to make it to the final AT LEAST. Fingers crossed they bring the ‘virtual reality’ concept to the stage.

Wivian

This song keeps moving up and down my list, so I really don’t know what to say about it. I will happily dance to it in Euroclub, but I’m really not sure how it will work on stage. And if I’m not much mistaken we’ve still not heard it performed live…which is pretty scary, to say the least.

Scores

When we remove the top score of 10 and the lowest score of 4.5, the average score for F.Y.R. Macedonia is a massive 9.25!
(Removing the top score and the lowest score helps to make the average score more reliable and less affected by outliers.)

Leaderboard

F.Y.R. Macedonia reaches 1st place in our leaderboard with a score of 9.25.

1. F.Y.R. Macedonia – 9.25
2. France – 9.04
3. Italy – 9.03
4. Belgium – 8.92
5. Azerbaijan – 8.00
6. Sweden – 7.77
7. Belarus – 7.75
8. Iceland – 7.46
9. Australia – 7.25
10. Israel – 7.21
11. Serbia – 7.08
12. Estonia – 7.07
13. Switzerland – 6.96
14. Denmark – 6.83
15. Armenia – 6.80
16. Portugal – 6.79
17. Hungary – 6.79
18. Cyprus – 6.71
19. Germany – 6.59
20. Austria – 6.58
21. Moldova – 6.58
22. Greece – 6.54
23. Norway – 6.33
24. Latvia – 6.25
25. Czech Republic – 6.25
26. United Kingdom – 6.00
27. Finland – 5.71
28. Ireland – 5.54
29. The Netherlands – 5.33
30. Albania – 5.21
31. Poland – 5.13
32. Ukraine – 5.13
33. Romania – 5.12
34. Malta – 4.25
35. San Marino – 3.92
36. Georgia – 3.91
37. Montenegro – 3.33
38. Croatia – 2.71
39. Slovenia – 2.13

Tomorrow, we will review Spain.
Do you agree with our reviews of the F.Y.R. Macedonia? What are your thoughts on Jana Burčeska’s ‘Dance Alone’? Let us know in the comments!