Malik Harris: Not a rock star

You can tell a pro by the fact that you can wake them up at any time and they are ready for a big performance. After Ingo Zamperoni’s fundraising gala for the Ukraine, in which Peter Maffay sang “Eiszeit”, Barbara Schöneberger and Bülent Ceylan have the task of moderating a program that determines which song will travel to Turin in May.

As a precaution, the audience in the Berlin studio is dressed in blue and yellow masks. Schöneberger sings to the melody of “Gloria” a text in which “over the burner”, “reserve loungers”, “meaningful tip”, “cut pasta” and “We love your country” occur, roughly the football World Cup anthem of 1990. Then the Miraculous sheds her skin and stands there in a voluminous white dress, and Bülent Ceylan appears with half glasses – the two mimes Al Bano and Romino Power with a corruption (“Barbicitta”). Schöneberger transformed again and now wears a black leather jacket with rivets: Now they are parodying last year’s uninhibited winners Maneskin and say so, in case anyone doesn’t remember.

Where is Nicole?

Thomas Hermanns, a savvy aficionado of the Eurovision Song Contest, is finally sitting on the nostalgia couch again, as well as the veteran Jane Comerford and the adopted Austrian ESC winner Conchita, as always a feast for the eyes. Comerford intones her evergreen “No No Never” from 2006 with Conchita, then “Rise Like A Phoenix”, Conchita brings an excerpt from “Euphoria” (winner 2012), before a comfortably familiar voice intones “A little peace”: Gitte Haenning strides onto the stage to give the hit song that Nicole won the competition with 40 years ago in a somewhat aunt-like manner. Where is Nicole? The legendary lyrics appear on the video wall in the background; Barbara Schöneberger urges the audience to continue singing.

Now the first candidate appears: Malik Harris, a bleached German-American from the Bavarian town of Landsberg, who, as a sign of his multi-instrumentalism, first grabs a keyboard, then hits an electric drum and finally rattles an acoustic guitar. He performs the everyday song “Rockstars” he wrote, in which the 24-year-old sentimentally bids farewell to his youth. In a kind of overcompensation, he overemphasises the American aspect; he panted a breathlessly spoken text directly into the camera. But what is that? Malik’s father, grimacing enthusiastically in the audience, is reminiscent of Ricky Harris, who once ran a riot talk show in the afternoon program of a private broadcaster. And he is!

The Koblenz-based group of friends Mael & Jonas also brought a father with them, who, wearing a hat on the keyboard, offers the rock number “I Swear To God”, which essentially consists of a riff and the refrain. As Bülent Ceylan later remarked, the two unequal bang batches are reminiscent of the North Sea coast duo Klaus & Klaus. A youngster from Flensburg named – really now? – Eros Atomus immediately skips the song and comes to the finale, stands in the wind machine with “Alive” and acoustic guitar and runs straight to the audience. A cellist fiddles, two men with fried guitars are jumping around.

The half-English Emily Roberts from Hamburg – once class representative, now princess in a tulle dress with thick boots – forgets a verse of her song of revenge “Soap”, which she learned from Olivia Rodrigo, because of all the soap bubbles on stage and then, in conversation with Schöneberger, doesn’t want to stop laughing. Not a bad song, but last place.

Felicia Lu, an applicant in 2017, sings the only competitive contribution: Her “Anxiety” is a real, slim and coherently performed pop song. While Nico Suave gathered two women and a man around him like a pig, called them “Team Liebe” and raped and gospels a nothing called “Hallo Welt” with this Brotherhood of Men.

The twelve points hoped for will be approximately the total of the votes cast for the contribution in Turin

This very transparent maneuver is then appreciated by the ESC seers Thomas Hermanns, Jane Comerford and Bülent Ceylan, less by the audience. The listeners of the pop waves from nine ARD stations agreed almost unanimously on Mael & Jonas, Malik Harris and Felicia Lu, always in this order, as representatives of these broadcasters are now presenting. As expected, Lu and Mael & Jonas lost among television viewers – “Rockstars” won. The twelve points hoped for will be approximately the total of the votes cast for the contribution in Turin.

In one eerie moment, Ukraine refugee Jamala, holding her country’s flag, performs her song “1944,” 2016’s winner, a masterpiece of controlled emphasis. Jamala proudly steps out of the studio. It leaves you with a guilty conscience.

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