PrePartyES 2024 took place in Madrid, Spain this past weekend, and viewers got a flavor of most 2024 Eurovision acts.
Some performers, like Italy’s Angelina Mango and Croatia’s Baby Lasagna, have already performed their songs live, so there were fewer questions as to how they would look on stage. Others, like Switzerland’s Nemo, had intrigue based around whether or not they could nail it live. We know more today about the scope of a potential Eurovision performance from many of these singers than we did before, and with the pre-party season just beginning, there is still more to learn.
Apropos of nothing, it was a delight to see the artists posting happy photos with one another on Instagram in Madrid. May there be much more of it to follow.
These are a few favorite performances from Saturday’s activity.
PrePartyES 2024: Angelina Mango
The conversation must start here with the 2024 Sanremo Festival winner. Angelina performed this song in Italy multiple times, winning one of the toughest song contests in the world in so doing. It should be no surprise that she pulled off a stellar performance of “La Noia” in Madrid. It should also not come as a surprise to anyone when she owns the stage in Malmö in May.
PrePartyES 2024 gave us some great camera angles, which may themselves be a look into our Eurovision future this spring. It remains to be seen if she will have any backing dancers or singers, but she has shown (again) that she can do this all by herself if necessary. Angelina has a commanding stage presence, a solid voice, and a catchy song. She has all the ingredients necessary to appeal to both the televote and the juries. If you have not yet taken notice of Italy in this year’s competition, now is the time. It has all the makings of a top-three contender, if not an outright winner.
PrePartyES 2024: Nemo
Nemo had some questions coming into the first pre-party of the 2024 Eurovision season, as we had never seen them perform the song live on stage. A music video can give you some insight, but how do you really know until they do it? Well, they answered a few of those questions for certain with Saturday’s performance. Switzerland will be a contender to win the whole thing in May.
This song is unique among all the others in the competition this year. It goes from operatic high notes to dropping a beat in the span of a few seconds, and you can bet the crowd will respond when Nemo does this in Malmö. Similarly to Angelina Mango, Nemo also showed they can take charge of a stage without any backing talent.
I suspect there will be very, very little separating the top songs this year at Eurovision, so maybe it takes a standout performance like this to get over the edge. All we can do is wait, but Swiss Eurovision fans should have legitimate hope in 2024.
Other Notable Performances
There are other YouTube videos out there with clips of the live performances, but they are on the shorter end and the quality is not as great (being towards the back of the arena, where it is more difficult to hear the vocals as opposed to, say, the crowd in between). With that said, I could pick up a few things that will bear future watching in the next pre-parties.
I stand by my suspicion that Ireland is going to be an interesting performance in May. With some inventive staging, I think Bambie is capable of pulling off quite the spectacle. It was not the easiest to hear them in the videos from Madrid that I watched, but the glimmers of hope were there.
The crowd really, really got into the Finland performance. That is an encouraging sign for them. The question that will be asked, fairly or not, is whether or not there is room in the contest for them and Croatia. Last year, Finland sucked all the air out of the room for several of the non-Loreen contestants. Still going to be fun to watch, that I can assure you.
As one might expect, the crowd was all over Croatia, and Megara may be San Marino’s act, but they had home-field advantage in Spain. They rocked out in Madrid, and I would not at all be shocked if SMR qualifies.
I am sticking behind Belgium as one of my top ten this year. Though we do not yet have a great video of Mustii’s performance, there was no drop-off between the music video and the live performance. He is one to watch in Malmö.
