Serbia returns to the Eurovision Song Contest in 2015 following a one-year break. Cynics might suggest they were sulking after Moje 3 failed to reach the grand final in Malmö; kinder souls would say they were simply taking time to rethink their approach to the contest after falling from grace since Marija Šerifović’s victory in 2007 – although let’s not forget that they achieved a podium finish as recently as 2012. In the meantime, neighbouring Montenegro qualified for the final for the first time last year despite a near-total absence of friendly Balkan countries to help them on the scoreboard, an achievement that may well have accelerated Serbia’s return to the ESC family.

A three-song national final in mid-February produced Bojana Stamenov as the Serbian representative for ESC 2015. Like the other two songs on offer, Ceo svet je moj was written by Vladimir Graić, the man responsible for the aforementioned Molitva. However, we won’t be hearing the Serbian language in Vienna. Instead, we’ll get to hear the English version of the song, as penned by one of the co-writers of Rise Like A Phoenix last year – and the similarities with last year’s winner are hard to ignore once you dig down into the message of the lyrics.

Beauty Never Lies is what we’ve ended up with here, and I don’t think it’s an entirely successful transition. I’m certainly not against songs being taken out of their native language and into English for the contest – it can make perfect sense to maximise your results potential – but sometimes a degree of subtlety can be lost along the way. And here, well, a whole truckload of subtlety is lost. “Finally I can say/Yes, I’m different, and it’s OK!” is the kind of thing I’d expect to see on a gay teenager’s Facebook wall, not being sung by a 28-year-old woman on an international stage. It’s all a bit naïve and embarrassing, frankly, and I don’t think it does the song any favours.

My verdict is that the song might be strong enough to survive this lyrical onslaught, but I have my doubts. I’ve never had an issue with the tempo change for the final chorus – it’s not like the first part of the song is a slow and tender ballad, after all – but the whole package comes across as a bit cheap and obvious now (if it didn’t already). There’s a very deliberate play here for the “Hera Björk effect” of a big girl singing a fan-friendly disco stomper, and that could work well enough with a Tuesday night audience, although I do find it striking that the song is seen as an outsider for qualification at the bookmakers; by now, you’d expect this kind of thing to be thoroughly overrated among fan-punters, and that doesn’t seem to have happened. Even if Bojana does beat the odds and make it through to Saturday night, though, I can’t see her pulling in many non-regional votes along the way.

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