CZECHIA 2024

 

Czechia held their national final, ESCZ, last week. In a rather controversial result (our first sketchy voting totals of the year!), Aiko took the win with her song "Pedestal". Here's the studio track:



About the Artist

Alena Shirmanova-Kostebelova, going by Aiko professionally, is a 23-year-old singer born in Moscow and raised in the western Czech spa town of Karlovy Vary. She didn't have a Wikipedia page until she was announced as the winner of ESCZ.


Best Things We Lost Along the Way

Voting discourse! The Czech results were determined by 70% international vote and 30% Czech vote - already an interesting choice. Aiko won the international vote in a landslide, but she was only 5th domestically. Is there a conspiracy? Does it matter that she was listed first on the confusing ballot and was easily accidentally clicked? Who knows. In any case, three other songs would have been solid options as well:

Song Analysis

There's a reason I didn't post the live version of Aiko's song - it was pretty bad. The song itself is pretty good, and it's drawing the obvious comparisons to Olivia Rodrigo and Paramore. If the vocals are good in May...great! But it needs work. Dancing around and singing well is very tough, and Aiko doesn't quite have that down yet.

Czechia's History


Not many participations, not much success. Czechia only went to Eurovision 3 times prior to 2015 (2007-09), failing to qualify each time and finishing dead last twice. They've been somewhat better in their more recent trips, but Mikolas Josef's polarizing "Lie to Me" remains the country's best ever finish in 6th.




In my personal rankings, the Czechs place 38th of 48 countries since 2000 - not great. But note the years on those top four entries! They've been on a roll lately (and it's not like Benny Cristo was bad, or anything), and if we cut the criteria to 2018-2023, they'd be much, much higher. 

Prognosis

If the vocals are good, I absolutely see this qualifying. If not...we'll see if the televoters can tolerate the mess.

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