Albania in the 2018 Grand Final?
A Merry late Christmas to all readers! If you do happen to be digesting this, you are probably not particularly one for the festive season of fun and frivolity and all I can say is "you're not alone". What I can excite you about however is that on December 23rd 2017 in Tirana, Albania, a jury decided that the winner of Albania's Festivali i Kenges 56 would be Eugent Bushpepa and 'Mall' ('Yearning' in Albanian). For all those who haven't listened to the song, I have included the youtube link below and it's definitely worth a listen. Now, everybody will have their own impressions and opinions on the song, so I am just going to start with some facts that put this song as one of the recent stand-out Albanian entries. 1) It's not a power ballad sung by a woman giving everything she has to a song that was initially written in Albanian and then translated (awkwardly into English). I am not alone in viewing the mess that was both 2016's