Azerbaijan 2024: FAHREE ft. Ilkin Dovlatov with Özünlə Apar'

Our final entry is here with Azerbaijan completing our annual late Caucasus flurry:

This is quite a nice song from Azerbaijan and a three minutes that passes fairly quickly. It’s not a complex composition at all but some of the production, the use of Azeri and the mugam addition give this a bit of character. Yes that's mostly window dressing a mediocre song but it is an effective strategy in differentiating this.

Sadly, character seems to be lacking from main man FAHREE who does not fill with confidence as a lead or a vocalist much and questions over his selection have not gone away following that showcase. Azerbaijan have selected unknowns on occasion and risen to the event but I don't see much charisma here yet.

Azerbaijan have really struggled in recent times with underperformances and there is a definite drag on their vote in my view with even the successful Chingiz’ 100 televote points a bit of a let down in 2018. Their more mediocre efforts have struggled to pick up much support at all with a combined 4 televote points in the last two semi final outings. Given that I don't see a lot of reason why that will change here, even if we get a decent live - which is still an Azeri strong point.

Personal Rating: 7/10

Competitve Rating: 3/10

Early Prediction: Semi Final 1 10th-15th, 22nd-26th if in the final.