Survivor (Armenia 2025)

It's the 2nd song out of 37! This time, it's Armenia, with Parg's (Or ESC Garg's! xD) Survivor! 

(Source)

Lyrics: 64%
Composition: 65%
Vocals: 68%
Staging: 74%
Vibes: 65%
Overall: 67.2%

Verdict: My brain has thankfully survived Parg's attempt to rhyme "survivor" with "alive-r". It really did not appreciate it, though.

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LYRICS - Total: 16/25 (64%)
Subject Matter: 6.5/10
Effective Use of Language: 2.5/5
Clarity: 4/5
Flow: 3/5

I... wanted to write something deep here since I'd written so much about Zjerm, but then I heard Parg trying to rhyme "survivor" with "alive" and I almost wanted to check out.

I mean. *Deep breath.*

WHAT.

On the surface, I guess I can see what he's trying to do? Like, a person who survives is a survivor, so a person who stays alive is a stay-aliver, right? And... well, you gotta respect the sheer audacity it takes to try and pull that off.

But no. Those two words do not rhyme. Turning "alive" into "alive-r" in some sort of misguided ambition to make the lyrics rhyme does NOT work. It sticks out like a sore thumb. In fact, it's so egregious that I'd call it this year's Valedictorian of the "Eric Saade School of Questionable Rhyming".

Also, "shiz".

Ok. Now that that's out of the way.

Empowerment songs have their place. There've been plenty of female ones at Eurovision over the years - which is not a comment on them as a whole, I'm just noting that it's more common for such songs to be sung by ladies - so having one sung by a guy, even though not a unicorn by any means, is at least somewhat refreshing. I also like the dark and gritty feel of the lyrics. That said, they do seem to be pretty straightforward/in-your-face, and some of the lyrics don't seem to flow very nicely or make sense in context ("I could have made mistakes" in the second verse). So yeah. There's no subtlety and no poetry to be found here. I guess you could say that it's kind of the point of the song (since a survivor wouldn't have much time for anything beyond the bare bones), so I wouldn't score it too low - though I wouldn't score it too high either.

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COMPOSITION - Total: 13/20 (65%)
Melody/Bass: 3/5
Instrumentation: 3/5
Development: 3/5
Coherence: 4/5

The contrasting middle 8 (which stops the song for long enough to allow us to draw breath and take a break from all the survivoring) actually makes the song work for me. Given the song starts with "I've got my bad shades on", it's really not all that difficult to imagine that the middle 8ths are the song's soft, true interior, with its hard, tough, survival-oriented exterior shell stripped away. And then, of course, since we have to get back to survivoring, the shell gets donned again to finish off the song. (Parg is a clam confirmed?)

Aside from that, the song is... okay. Development-wise, it doesn't really seem to go anywhere, though perhaps that's the point. The instrumentation is okay - pretty serviceable, but it also feels like nothing really stands out in a noteworthy way, good or bad.

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VOCALS - Total: 17/25 (68%)
Vocals: 13/20
Immersion: 4/5

Much like the song itself, for most of it, Parg's voice appears to be merely surviving. He got the big note right, but I the ends of many of his phrases feel a little... truncated? Like he's either trying to conserve his breath or just couldn't hold the note long enough.

Then again, to be fair, the dude is on a treadmill and running about, which would make it harder for him to get stuff right. And it honestly wasn't bad.
There was just plenty of better singing out there.

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STAGING - Total: 18.5/25 (74%)
The Show: 7/10
The Story: 7.5/10
Outfits: 4/5

There are constant jump cuts in the verse, as well images of him superimposed over the real dude. I don't really know what I'm supposed to take from that, and it's a little annoying. I liked the treadmill work; it made the act far more dynamic and gave it a freneticism that suited the energy of the song, and I can see how it was meant to help convey the idea of having to constantly move, to actively survive. I suppose that's what the jump cuts were intended to do, but I'm not sure much of that came through. The stark black and white lighting is a great touch, though at some points I was wondering if there were too many lights.

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VIBES - 65%
It's not something I'd have on a daily playlist, and it's not a song I'd randomly look up on Youtube just to listen to (and not a song I'd even really think about randomly in a good way), but it's not bad and I guess I wouldn't turn it off if it came on.