Eurovision 2005 - Number 62 - Polina Griffith - "Justice of Love"
Encouraged perhaps by all the other countries having fun with national finals, Russia held its first Evrovidinie since 1996. There were some interesting wrinkles. It was an open selection for the first time, with the broadcaster, Channel 1 Russia, inviting submissions from across the country. They'd hoped for enough songs for four semi-finals, but had to cut it to three when the quality and quantity just weren't there.
The also ran each show three times. Russia is a land of many time-zones and rather than record it and show it with a delay for the later time zones, they instead ran the show three times, live, and broadcast it so that if it was too early for you at first, you could catch one of the later run throughs. Thus each act had to perform three times.
One of those acts in the third semi-final was Polina Griffith. She was a singer who has been in the band A'Studio from 2001-2004. They were a long running concern having started out in the 1980s in what became Kazakhstan. They'd had a number of lead singers who came and went including Polina. 2005 saw her trying to make it solo and thus a new national final was exactly what she was looking for.
Justice of Love was sung in English from the get go. Polina had lived and worked in the USA for a time and so her slightly Russian accent also has an American twang in there too. The song is a straight pop song/girl bop and thus exactly what was current for Eurovision. There's just enough disco in there to make this time-agnostic. It could have been released (with different production) at almost any time since the early 1980s, though that thumping beat places it later. The production is slick if not standing out to much.
This is pop product. It's got a beat, got a hook, sung well. The thing that it lacks, is anything to differentiate it from similar material and the world is awash with similar material. The broadcaster had almost specifically asked for material like this when the call for submissions went out in late 2004.
It managed to get only sixth in the semi-final. With the top three making it to the final, that wasn't enough. It did get 6.7% of the televote, which wasn't too far behind the song that finished third, but alas, for Polina, this opportunity passed by. She did try again (in 2009) and also had a number of singles released subsequently. Her role was mostly to become a featured vocalist in collaborations with other artists. She has a voice made for club tracks and indeed stretching in the 2010s, that where she could be heard. Her biggest song ever was the track SOS when she was still with A'Studio in 2004 that seems to have become something of an Ibiza summer favourite.
