Albania have decided! Albina & Familja Kelmendi, with their song Duje, have won Festivali i Këngës’s televote and won Albania’s ticket to Liverpool!
Albina Kelmendi, alongside her family: Familja Kelmendi, have secured the right to represent Albania, with their song Duje, at Eurovision Song Contest 2023 in Liverpool, after winning the televote in the Albanian national selection, Festivali i Këngës.
However, the rules for Albania’s Eurovision participation were altered this year so that the, newly introduced, televote would decided which song would go to Eurovision 2023. Previously, the jury had decided the winner of Festivali i Këngës and Albania’s Eurovision entrant. The overall winner of Festivali i Këngës was two time FiK winner and former convict, Elsa Lila, with her song Evita. It is unknown where Evita came in the televote, however, we do know that Duje came 2nd in the jury vote.
As usual with Albania, it is likely the song will undergo a revamp before Eurovision 2023, which the nation has continued to do most years since they first debuted at the contest in 2004. However, it is also likely this revamp will be released in the final week before the EBU deadline, so it will probably be well over two months until we hear it. Albanian revamps over the years have been both drastic like Fall from the Sky in 2020 or subtle like Mall in 2018. It is unknown how major the revamp of Duje will be.
There are also questions being raised about whether Familja Kelmendi will join Albina on stage in Liverpool, but the official Eurovision twitter seem to have confirmed “Albina & Familja Kelmendi” overall as Albania’s entrant.
Analysis by Benjamin Windibank
Duje is a strong song from Albania, but I worry without a severe revamp, it may very well fail to make an impression in Liverpool. The song is, ironically for all the rule changes, very similar to what Albania normally enter to Eurovision year-in-year-out. I expect if Duje fails to qualify then it won’t be long until the Festivali i Këngës winner ends up representing Albania at Eurovision again. I do like the song and it is really very strong but I do feel it could get easily lost in a field of 16 songs.
Duje was overall my 3rd favourite out of the Festivali i Këngës lineup, so I did enjoy it a lot, but I do feel that some of the other songs could have given Albania a far better chance of a good Eurovision 2023 result than Duje can. We’ll wait and see for the revamp!
Analysis by Tadeusz Cisłak
While it certainly required courage to step out of their comfort zone, I’m glad that Albania made that step and proved that it values musical creativity… Wait, Stop isn’t going to ESC? Then what is? No, this year won’t mark a change in Albanian Eurovision approach. Instead of quality, they decided to double down on quantity – Duje sounds like Karma to the second power, with a flavour of Leonard Cohen and some guitar riffs. Is this a bad song? Not at all, but it’s Albanian to a grotesque level.
Hopefully a revamp will remove this stylistic excess, but I don’t think 2023 would belong to Albania either way. At its core, this is just a simple good ballad – and that’s nowhere near enough to conquer Eurovision nowadays.
