Austria 2021 - Vincent Bueno with ‘Amen’

Vincent delivers the year's most un-anticipated entry (again) as the second ‘Amen’ song enters the mix:

Austria have a bit of a habit recently of sending acts lacking that something special to really sell a song to 200million people and Vincent Bueno is no exception. I personally don't see much star quality here and whilst that might be overlooked were his back catalogue strong, that's not really the case. ORF look to be spooked at the prospect of hosting again, particularly after Cesar Sampson's jury success and the level of effort they've put into the contest is quite disappointing.

‘Amen’ is something of an improvement on ‘Alive’, but swaps cringeworthy datedness for just boredom. The song is not all bad and does pick up as it goes along but it is liable to get lost in the mix here. Despite my criticisms of Vincent, this is more his wheelhouse and the vocal should be fine. It would take both a strong live performance and good staging to get this in contention to qualify, something I don't think is very likely, but it's in the discussion much more than last year, and looks the more likely ‘Amen’ of the two to qualify.

Juries have shown Austria a fair amount of love recently and they should be fairly satisfied with this but it's really hard to see this making a dent in the televote. This also has the potential to be placed in the number 2 slot which would not help one bit. Provisionally, I have to have this in the lower reaches of the semi but I’m willing to be surprised on this.

Personal Rating: 2/10 Competitive Rating: 4/10 Early Prediction: Semi Two 13th-17th (NQ)