If I could sit down for an interview with the people in charge for song selections in Portugal, I would only ask one question: What are you aiming to achieve when you pick the songs you do for your selections? I suspect – or hope – the answer wouldn’t be “succeeding in Eurovision”, because it would be quite sad for a country to manage to be so clueless and hopeless for so many years.

Having participated since 1964, Portugal has been inside the top 10 a handful of times, with their last top 10 appearance (as well as their all-time best placing) being in 1996, where they finished 6th (and in an appropriate fashion, this was followed up by a last place and a nil pointer the following year). Since the beginning of the semi finals, Portugal has qualified 3 times out of 10 attempts. Even a record of a second-place finish in the semi final, in 2008, was only enough for a midtable placement on Saturday night – and that entry was actually written by a Slovenian. Last year’s entry by the lovely Suzy was only 1 point away from qualifying, which probably means it wouldn’t have done too well in the final if it reached it either.

Sadly for the 20-year-old Leonor Andrade, who will represent Portugal with the song, Há um mar que nos separa (There’s a sea that separates us), even an 11th place in the semi final looks very much out of reach. What makes it even sadder is that there are actually quite a few nice things to say about this entry. The electro-rockish verses of the song are actually quite wonderful and interesting, and definitely the most modern sounding thing Portugal has ever sent to Eurovision, and Leonor’s voice sounds great and works well for those. The lyrics for the song are beautiful, and being as pretty as she is doesn’t hurt either. What does hurt? That chorus. The composer of the song seems to have panicked by the idea of writing an entire song that would sound modern and interesting, so in the chorus he decided to pull in a chorus from a different song and genre altogether, and that chorus is a major letdown. Not only it feels completely out of place, it also drags and sounds like it has been written 25 years before the verses. And don’t even get me started with rambling about the non-existing production values of the backing track.

My verdict is that despite an interesting enough opening to the song and the potential to be visually appealing (if not for the staging – never a strong suit of Portugal – at least for what Andrade was born with), it will descend into the territory of forgettable so quickly, viewers will not even get a chance to finish reading the song’s title on the screen. Which is too bad, really, because both the song and her have some potential – potential that is enough for me to actually like it, but even I know it wouldn’t be enough to get her out of the bottom of this semi (unless Portugal somehow comes up with some insanely stunning staging – which: nah). All I will be left with is the hope that maybe next year, Portugal will actually try to get it right. And as the Czech representatives who will follow Portugal on stage this year can tell us, Hope never dies.

(As if you needed another sign to how much this song has no chance – not only did I end up mentioning another entry in here, to add insult to injury, it is the Czech entry, the only other country that seems to be as hopeless as Portugal. Although at least they had a lot less time to learn from their mistakes).

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