BELGIUM

Hooverphonic  – ‘The wrong place’

After a pair of non qualifiers in 2018 (Sennek ) and 2019 (Eliot), the announcement that Hooverphonic would represent Belgium was met with a good deal of enthusiasm from the Eurovision community.

Recent releases at the time from the band such as ‘Romantic’  and ‘Horrible Person‘,  suggested that a well produced upbeat radio friendly pop song, that would have wide appeal, was in the works.

Instead however, the band dropped a wannabe Bond theme in ‘Release me’ that left many fans cold and excitement quickly died down.

Fast forward 12 months – Luka Cruysberghs the lead singer has been replaced by Geike Arnaert, who had been with the band previously for 10 years until the late 2000’s, and their 2021 entry ‘The wrong place’ is released.

‘The wrong place’ is a mid tempo, somewhat dark, brooding song accompanied by a cinematic, visually appealing music video, and indeed, as with their 2020 entry, the song feels like it could have been lifted from a film score.

The jarring and very abrupt ending leads me to have a strong suspicion that the song has been ‘trimmed’ for Eurovision and one can’t help feeling that a longer version would have been a more satisfying experience.

One can’t help but feel that despite the quality of the song, this is another borderline qualifier for Belgium in 2021 that could well suffer the same fate as the aforementioned Sennek and Eliot.