The Cali Garmo

Next up on our list is Armenia who will be in the 1st Semi-final as well.

This year Armenia will be represented by Aram MP3. Aram himself is not only an excellent singer, but he also does comedy on the side which made many Armenians weary about selecting him. His singing talent though ended up winning the internal committee's heart. Armenia has had varying success in previous song contests. Last year they placed 18th in the grand final and the year before they couldn't even get out of the semi-final round. They had their best result in 2008 when Sirusho got 4th place in the final and it looks like Armenia is trying to replicate those results this year. Being the first country to get over 1 million views on youtube, Armenia seems to be trying it's hardest to get as much publicity as it can. Unfortunately that includes a lot of negative publicity. Aram MP3 has recently made homophobic and transphobic remarks which have caused many Armenians across Europe to be disheartened by his comments and have thus vowed not to vote for him. (For details on his comments you can view them in English here). Considering the competition tends to draw a large gay audience this negative publicity might end up hurting Aram MP3 and the chances of Armenia winning will surely go down if it continues.

Aram's song is called 'Not Alone' and was actually written by Aram MP3 himself (with lyics by Garik Papoyan and instrumental arrangement by Lilit Navasardyan). The song itself is very well made with a nice slow build up in the beginning and the dubstep undertones near the end. The song is not the traditional dance pop song we used to expect to win Eurovision, but a song that seems to resonate more with the current audience of Eurovision. Armenia seems poised to do very good this year, but can it keeps its momentum all the way through the final? And a bigger question of whether Aram MP3 can win back the support of the biggest voting bloc of Eurovision, the gays.

Click here to view Aram's participant profile on Eurovision.tv