Austria Entry: Natália Kelly - Shine

May 21, 2013 Critic Jonni 0 Comments

Natália Kelly is an 18 year old singer, who was born in America, but moved to Austria when she was just six years old. Her father is American with Austrian and Irish roots, her mother is Brazilian. She won The Voice in Austria 2012, that has been going since 2002, and has nothing to do with the international franchise 'The Voice'. After winning she entered Österreich rockt den Song Contest, which is the Austrian selection process for the Eurovision Song Contest, and Natália Kelly won that too. However she failed to get through to the final. There was so much buzz about her before the competition started, I really thought she was a contender for winning, but she kicked off the first semi final, leaving the other 15 acts following after her. Her song got forgotten by the time the voting opened, and unfortunately didn't get through. But I loved it, hence why she's in my Eurovision Special.

"Shine" was written by Andreas Grass, Nikola Paryla, Alexander Kahr and Natália Kelly. The song is catchy and powerful. She portrays emotions through her words and she means every single one of them. I just cannot believe this didn't make the final, it was definitely worthy of a higher position.

Austria came 14th out of 16 countries in the first Semi Final. She got 27 points and fell short of getting through to the final. She got 1 point from Estonia, 1 point from Slovenia, 4 points from Croatia, 4 points from Denmark, 3 points from Moldova, 4 points from Ireland, 2 points from Cyprus, 3 points from Belgium, 2 points from Serbia, 2 points from Italy and 1 point from the UK.

This music video is simple and totally focused on effects. The performance-based video brings her strong powerful vocals to the camera exposing how much she believes in this song.

The start is in black and white, which worried me, I really do not like black and white music videos, so I was happy when it went into colour. And then I saw how musical she is, playing the guitar, the piano, the drums... This is the Natália Kelly band. What let this side down was seeing someone help her with the drums... Maybe she isn't a musical genius as I first thought.

We have a lot of fun scenes, where the title of the song is behind her, where her name gradually appears behind her, various behind the scenes clips that show her laughing, trying to catch the drumsticks and just having the time of her life. She is the girl next door, and the video portrays her perfectly.

Then ending is full of fun fun fun, balloons, dancing, paint bombs (is there such a thing? Or did I just make that up?), and a dog or two. One of the topless guys slips over just as Natália Kelly gets splattered by a paint bomb, I just can't help but replay that scene over and over again. The very ending when she splats that guy is great to watch too because he doesn't expect it.

Overall a catchy song that should've made it through to the final, and a music video filled with fun, making Natália Kelly shine. She obviously had a wonderful time, and you just want to be there with her. She looks good, and has an infectious personality that is so bubbly. I just want to be her friend, as I'm sure many other fans want to be too.