(Picture: Eurovision Song Contest)

Jacques Houdek represents Croatia at the Eurovision Song Contest with My Friend this year and it might just be the most over the top entry of the year.

The coach from The Voice Croatia effectively performs a duet with himself in a rock-pop-opera entry, complete with a string quartet, pyrotechnics and strobe lighting for good measure.

Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber wrote a ballad for Eurovision in 2009 and came fifth, but Jacques manages to produce an entire musical and condense it into three minutes of Eurovision madness. The thing is, it’s all come together and Croatia could be this year’s surprise package.




In the second round of rehearsals, we get to see a sneak peak of the final television show production and it really looks impressive. In a year where so many acts stand alone in the middle of a huge circular stage, this entry has suddenly found its wheels.

Jacques is your average plus-sized tenor with a special operatic voice, but he also has a pitch perfect voice for pop. What do you do with two such talents? Well, you could duet with yourself at Eurovision. Now, they do say talking to yourself is the first sign of madness, but singing to yourself in front of 200 million people is going a tad too far. Or is it?

We’ve seen violinist win Eurovision with Diman Bilan for Russia in 2009 and don’t forget Norway’s 1995 entry, which featured a full role for the strings but only 14 words in the entire song.

By My Friend, Jacques is clearly referring to himself, but he does have other friends on stage. The backing vocalists give this a real Eurovision feel and he comes through the camera with a charismatic performance.

No-one saw this coming, but we could well see Croatia at this year’s Eurovision Final. All it has to do is beat eight other songs and finish in the top ten at Thursday’s second Eurovision Song Contest semi final.

Croatia made it to the Eurovision final last year by the skin of their teeth. They were 10th in the semi final and finished 23rd in the final with Nina Kraljic. Her costume might have been the key, through it won the Barbara Dex Award for the worst outfit of the year. It was Croatia’s first appearance in the final since 2009. Their best ever result was 4th place in 1996.

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