Belgium

Third rehearsing already is Belgium. 18 year old Loic Nottet is gonna do Belgium proud no matter what.

In my review of the first rehearsal I said that I felt that the emphasis lay mostly on the backings, and it's good to see that this has now been shifted to Loic. He's really working the camera with his big eyes and stares.

The backdrop is still very much black and white. We're still having the backings doing alternative steps and movements and the big lightshow throughout the song has remained as well.

This is very different for Belgium and I can only applaud it. There are still a few camera angles that need working on, especially for the bit where Loic lays on the floor, but I'm sure that's going to be worked on.

Vocally sounds great, albeit a little shouty towards the end, but the song lends to it.

Impressive.

All sorts of problems vocally with this today. he really struggles to reach the notes at times, which is a huge shame as this is a personal favourite of mine.....again no changes to the staging from last time...

Still not sure that the dancers add anything to this performance, I feel the focus should have always been on him, standing alone giving all the obvious emotion he has inside to the camera

Belgium's come to the Eurovision Song Contest with a dazzling new young star, who's firmly behind the creative concept of both his song and act.

Now Loic's song is clearly one of the most current tracks of the year, and he's certainly living up to the expectations of nailing the song vocally.

But right now as it stands, it feels like the focus for the Belgian performance is mainly focussing on the backing singers, who are delivering a strong vocal but also take part in an interpretative dance routine.
It's a little bit of an odd situation, because the act should be around Loic. I think this could easily be helped by moving Loic, a couple of steps closer towards the group. A good thing however is how captivating Loic really is. His glance, facial expression and eyes just look straight through the viewers.

Overall the performance is an absolute extravaganza of white beam lights, which is going together with the mainly white backdrop, which gets broken up by black parts. and if Loic was mentioning this is a first for Eurovision, then he might be onto something.

Perhaps we're not yet seeing things on the stage yet, but as it stands Belgium sounds better than it looks on the stage, and that could be a bit of a problem, coming next week. Let's see how the rest of the week progresses.

Six Points!

I love Loïc Nottet's song; it's one of my favorites. His voice, song style and even his look stands out for sure; to me he looks a bit of an alien :) The performance itself is not very impressive, not much action on the stage. The backing vocals are acting as dancers as well and everybody's vocals are good, can't criticize it.

The movements are very minimalistic, sometimes it's just the shoulders that are moving, moreover not very confident. The background effects are as well minimalistic with blight flashes emerging all the time. The whole performance is meant to be a play with contrasts. So, something has to be changed for sure to make it more memorable for the audience. Memorable in a good way, of cause.

And totally the same staging as we all saw on that live performance on The Voice Belgium a few days ago

Still a little shouty but I always thought that this works well with this song anyway.....

And there are rolling on the floor moments from Loic......but it's still pretty obvious that this is being treated as a glorified sound check by the Belgium team, no one trying to hard....

AND LOL Loic just said "Sorry I messed it up" as he was in totally wrong place on the stage at the end:-) Always love a bit of human side to the artists

Finally that moment in 2015 arrives when the first countries grace the 2015 Eurovision stage for the very first time, we kick off this morning with Moldova, Armenia, Belgium and The Netherlands and then skip into the afternoon with Finland, Greece, Estonia and finishing the day but no means least Macedonia

We come at the rehearsals with some preconceptions as to what will be good, bad and indifferent as we have already seen performances from many of the delegates on the promo tour.....but forget all that WE WILL clear our small brains of all this and open a totally open mind and be as objective as we can

Just a few more hours and clips from www.eurovision.tv should be online plus opinions from the 5 million other bloggers about to unfurl their (sometimes brutal) honesty on the world