Wasted Love (Austria 2025)

 4/37. It's Austria's JJ with his ocean of Wasted Love!

(Source)

Wow, I'm getting really strong flashbacks to Trampoline. Similar vibes.

Lyrics: 68%
Composition: 100%
Vocals: 96%
Staging: 96%
Vibes: 80%
Overall: 88%

Verdict: Sounds like an iDevice ad song for some reason, but I like it.

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LYRICS - Total: 17/25 (68%)
Subject Matter: 5/10
Effective Use of Language: 3.5/5
Clarity: 4.5/5
Flow: 4/5

Wasted Love's lyrics are... some of the lyrics of all time. By which I mean that they range from pretty great to underwhelming.

It starts pretty strong with its ocean metaphor - "I'm an ocean of love, and you're scared of water" is a beautiful line. "You don't want to go under, so you let me go under," immediately cuts to the heart of the song, and then there's "I reach out my hand, but you watch me grow distant" where we see that this other person gave up on the relationship for whatever reason, leaving our singer to drift out to sea and fend for themselves. It's very strong scene-painting.

That said. I didn't think I'd be inducting another entry into the "Eric Saade School of Questionable Rhyming" quite so soon. "You don't want to go under, so you let me go under" is WORSE than "stay-aliver". Hell, it's worse than Eric Saade's impossible-possible rhyme because guess what? This rhymes a word with ITSELF. That's just...

Wow.

Also, there's that "still, I'm holding on to hope" in the second verse, which thematically feels a little weird - JJ's singing about how he's been left in the deep end and how he feels that he's lost everything and is left with only wasted love - why the sudden single line about "still holding on" with nothing to back it up before or after? I mean, yeah, okay, it's good that the character singing the song is not completely depressed, but for me, it felt a little bit like emotional whiplash. 

Subject matter wise - it's a breakup song. Done well, but still basically a breakup song.

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COMPOSITION - Total: 20/20 (100%)
Melody/Bass: 5/5
Instrumentation: 5/5
Development: 5/5
Coherence: 5/5

Musically, Wasted Love is beautiful. It starts off really gentle, like someone looking back with sadness, then brings us the first rocky chorus - then back to a gentle second verse of a person trying to hold on but falling into emotional turmoil in the second chorus, which drops even further into the operatic trance section that just goes wild. And it's all held together so well. Such a strong thematic idea, leading us in from a person looking back on love and then slowly sliding into re-lived heartbreak as a result. It develops very naturally, too. The instruments follow along with the core metaphor of water perfectly and I can almost feel the waves going from gentle lapping to crashing down as the song progresses. The melody, too, plays into this - in the verses, it's mainly steps and smaller jumps, while in the chorus there are larger jumps up to octave jumps. The melody is the person, carried upon the water. The bass is the water, churning and roiling and pounding.

I feel like musically speaking, this has to be one of the best packages in a while. Plus, I love how it feels very balanced, how it feels like appropriate weight was placed on all 3 sections (verses, chorus, trance).

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VOCALS - Total: 24/25 (96%)
Vocals: 19/20
Immersion: 5/5

I mean, come on. That was a masterful performance. Several notes sounded a little sharp or flat, but it didn't take away from the performance at all. And that bit where he growls and crumples the paper boat, only to get basically right back to his C#5. Impressive.

No criticisms worth mentioning here, really. That was fantastic.

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STAGING - Total: 24/25 (96%)
The Show: 9.5/10
The Story: 10/10
Outfits: 4.5/5

Ok. Short backtrack to the Lyrics section - I take back what I said about the "I'm holding on to hope" line - it's not completely context-less now, with the lighthouse ending. He was lost at sea, but I assume the lighthouses represent the people around him showing him love, guiding him back to safety, giving him hope in future relationships, helping him fight through this wasted one.

I LOVE LOVE LOVE everything about this staging. It's my 2nd favourite staging of the year; it's got so much thought put into it. From the start, with JJ on his boat and quietly drifting - no sails, wearing his thermal blanket, listless and aimless. And then with the oncoming storm, the sails unfurl, the shaky cam comes in, and the sheer BEAUTY of the visuals making it really look like he's at sea *chef's kiss*. The screens, the imagery, the top-down shot of the raging ocean were almost perfect (some of the boxes looked a little awkward), then the end where the lighthouses spear out of the darkness to guide him back to shore. There was obviously so, SO much thought put into it. I love it. It's one of this year's best in visual storytelling and builds on the work of teams like Ireland 2024 (Doomsday Blue). The only reason why I'm not giving The Show 10/10 is because there was one (and only one) song I was captivated more by, that I think was harder to pull off and was done just as well. But we'll get to that one later.

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VIBES - 80%
Great. Not my main genre of music and I wouldn't be able to listen to it nonstop, but I'd definitely put this on a playlist. I'd try to sing it when it comes on. Assuming, of course, that no one's at home and I wouldn't be disturbing the neighbours.