2008: The Guilty

OLTA BOKA FOR "ZEMRËN E LAMË PENG" FOR ALBANIA

PHOTO SOURCE: eurovision.de

With a gentle guitar playing over sincerely emotionally vocals, this song was an instant retribution to the hilarity of their 2004 entry. The chord progression gave the song a mournful tone that just elevates the power of the young singer's vocals. Though by the time the song reached the Eurovision stage they had added harder rock elements, the original recording remains one of my all time Eurovision ballads.

"Hearts Trapped in Time" was one of my instant favorites from the year, but I wasn't sure it would make it through to the final. There was heavy competition in the second semi-final. What was worse, I couldn't give the show my full attention. I was out of town and trying to watch it under the table on an iPod on a restaurant's poor wifi (it was 2008 after all). I managed to see bits of her performance but only very little. I was thrilled later, when I saw that Albania had made it into the final. She didn't quite get a great score in the end, but I still think that getting through was victory enough.The Albanian Broadcaster has a habit of forcing all the videos of this song to remove it's audio, so the only video of the Eurovision performance is cut by a my minute. Which is fine, it's really all about that recording in the second video.

Semi-Final Score: 67 pts (9th place out of 28)

Final Score: 55 pts (16th place out of 24)

Written by Adrian Hila & Pandi Laço.

Final Performance:

Music Video: