We are up to 12th position in our countdown of the Aussievision team's Junior Eurovision rankings.
In 12th place just outside the top 10 is Russia!
Five of our jury had it in their top 10 however, so read below to get song details and our individual rankings and comments.
The entry
Tatyana Mezhentseva and Denberel Oorzhak - A Time for Us
Tatyana Mezhentseva and Denberel Oorzhak will represent Russia and are the only duo competing in Gliwice. The pair met during the Children's New Wave contest and formed a close friendship. They decided to compete in the Russian national selection which they won coming 1st in the online voting and kids jury, and finishing 2nd in the adult jury for a comfortable victory.
10-year-old Tatyana based in Moscow has been singing since the age of 4 and had a hand in writing the lyrics for the song song. 13-year-old Denberel was born in the Republic of Tuva, close to the border of Mongolia. Winning contests isn't new to Denberel as he won the show You are Super! on channel NTV in Russia and the winner of the contest Children's New Wave.
The ranking
Guy - 4th
Kyriakos - 4th
Alyce - 5th
Mike - 7th
Aaron - 10th
Dale - 12th
Emma - 18th
Liv - 18th
Fleur - 19th
The comments
Denberel’s deep husky voice against Tatyana’s sweet voice makes this song a nice balanced duet. The song has a great ‘get together now’ feel chorus. ~ Kyriakos
Russia usually sends such strong JESC entries but this one is not for me. Denberel’s deep growling voice doesn’t blend well with Tatyana’s sweet high vocals. For me this would have been much stronger as a solo piece or they should have picked two singers whose voices harmonised well together. ~ Emma
A really interesting entry out of Russia this year. I'm not entirely sure the vocal styles of both singers blend harmoniously and the song does seem to fall a little flat at times, but ultimately a strong anthemic chorus does rescue it in the end. ~ Mike
Good ballad / mid tempo track… the duet works ~ Guy
Wow, what a contrast in their voices!!! Denberel’s voice lies somewhere between Fabrizio Moro’s and Bledar Sejko’s, Tatyana’s is well...the complete polar opposite of that. Honestly I am not a fan of this, it sounds rather formulaic despite their interesting singing techniques. It will be interesting to see how this goes. ~ Fleur
Nothing displeases me about this entry...but also nothing grabs me as something I really liked either. Just a bit meh. Will have a leg up being the only duet this year though. ~ Liv
This is a song I definitely feel is underrated this year. This is another song that I just can’t help but sing along to, even though I don’t speak the language. The music video paints an interesting picture of a dystopian future, and it will be interesting to see what they do with the staging. The more I think about it, this could be one of those entries that with the right staging could propel up the leader board. ~ Alyce
Russia at Junior Eurovision
Russia has competed in Junior Eurovision since 2005 and won the contest twice. First in 2006 with the Tomalchevy Twins and their song 'Vesenniy jazz' (the sisters went on to represent Russia the senior contest in 2014) and more recently in 2017 with Polina Bogusevich's 'Wings'. They have made the Top 10 on every occasion.