3 minutes on Armenia

 

Armenia in Eurovision 2022

Armenia entered the Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) for the first time in 2006 where they placed eighth. In the country’s 15 performances since, they have yet to place better than fourth (EBU, n.d.). The 2022 rotation of the ESC took place in Turin, Italy following Måneskin’s victory the previous year. In 2022, the Eurovision audience was extended to its full capacity for the first time since the Contest’s cancellation in 2020 due to COVID-19. Armenia hoped to break their placement record in Turin with its representation by Roza Kostandyan (“Rosa Linn”) who performed “Snap,” an English-language folk-pop song. However, while Rosa Linn did make it to the grand final of the Contest, it placed twentieth. Despite this, “Snap” was a breakaway success, amassing nearly 1 billion streams on Spotify since (Linn, Spotify). 

The ESC has often been a platform for nations to put national identity on display and create a sense of either unity or individualism. National identity is a combination of shared history, values, and religion that is used to develop a sense of unity within a group of people (Smith, 1991, p. 73). With some additional consideration since the last blog post, Armenia’s national identity’s constituents include a sense of homogeneity in ethnicity, language, and religion, as well as a marked separation from Azerbaijan, a neighboring nation with which there has been a long-standing territorial rivalry. In addition, Armenia is caught between its past with the Soviet Union and ties to Russia, and an effort to forge new relations with Western Europe and the United States (Antonyan et al., 2022). This blog post will explore the visual, lyrical, musical, and staging components of Rosa Linn’s ESC 2022 performance of “Snap” and aim to connect these elements to Armenia’s expression of national identity.

Artist Background

Rosa Linn was 22 in her performance of “Snap” on the ESC 2022 stage. She was born and raised in the north of Armenia, where she is still currently based. She began writing songs at a very young age, which led her to participate in Armenia’s national selection for the Junior ESC in 2013, though she was ultimately not chosen to continue (Eurovoix, 2022). Rosa is bilingual with exceptional fluency in English due to a year of studying abroad in Wisconsin when she was 18 (Antonyan, 2022). Since then, Rosa has had a steady focus on her music career, where released her debut single “King” in September of 2021, followed by television performances. “Snap” was finally selected for the 2022 ESC by the Armenian broadcaster AMPTV and announced in March of 2022 (EBU, 2022). Rosa has been vocal on her X (formerly Twitter) account in her support of Armenia through the conflict with Azerbaijan (Linn, n.d.), which certainly informed many of her decisions around her Eurovision performance.

Performance Components

Lyrics

“Snap” is fully in English, making it more accessible to an international audience. Lyrically, it delves into issues of mental health and reaching a “snapping point” (Linn, 2022) that others tell you is easy to escape from. The song opens with Rosa’s struggle with racing thoughts and memories that she can’t avoid, and how others told her “just snap your fingers” to get over her struggles. She uses metaphors, “My heart‘s been on fire / I‘ve been spending my nights / In the rain trying to put it out,” to describe universal feelings of hurt and heartbreak and the low points that often follow. In the second verse, Rosa mentions the date June 22nd. In her press conference for Eurovision, she cites this date as a moment her life changed (Destination Eurovision, 2022). The bridge continues with repetitive lyrics, building Rosa’s frustration with people’s minimization of her struggles.

On her X account, Rosa described how both isolation due to the pandemic and the Nagorno-Karabakh war had serious impacts on her mental health, prompting her to write “Snap” (Linn, n.d.). She stood strongly in support of Armenia following Azerbaijan’s 2020 invasion, though the refugee crisis of those displaced from Nagorno-Karabakh to Armenia was sure to have an impact on the entire nation. Rosa channeled her emotions from her experience with the Nagorno-Karabakh and depression from pandemic isolation into lyrics that could be relatable to anyone who has struggled with their mental health, not just those affected by the conflict in Armenia. Broadening the scope of her lyrics likely contributed to the skyrocketing of her song’s popularity following the ESC.

Visuals and Staging

The staging for the ESC 2022 live performance of “Snap” sets the scene for a somber and personal-feeling performance. The set was a bedroom with a striking lack of color; walls, furniture, and even the microphone were covered in small, square-shaped pieces of cloth while Rosa Linn sat on a white cloth-covered bed, holding a white guitar, wearing white head-to-toe. A soft, dark blue illuminated most of the room while Rosa was spotlit in a warm white with her guitar. As the first chorus began and the intensity of the song increased, Rosa stood from the bed without the guitar, and the spotlight followed her as she sang. Into the second verse, Rosa began to pull pieces of cloth from the wall, revealing a few select lyrics as she sang them: “The last ONE,” “June 22nd,” a drawn heart, and “Snap.” In the final dramatic component of the performance, Rosa pulled away a large circular section of cloth from the wall, revealing an opening from which she stepped out onto the stage to finish out the song.

The song taking place in a bedroom was likely a reference to days spent alone in her room due to the pandemic. Rosa’s clothing was almost reminiscent of clothing that might be provided by a mental health clinic, as it was all white and loose-fitting. This spoke to her message regarding the importance of respecting yours and others’ mental health. The lyrics that she highlighted by writing on the wall seemed to speak to a hope for recovery and building yourself back up. When she finally stepped out into the crowd, this likely symbolized her recovery, as she broke free from the confines of the all-white blue-lit room.

Music

Rosa Linn’s vocal and musical style is fairly typical for popular Western music, with a relatively simple melody in the first verse that builds into a louder and more energetic chorus. The background music of the song is folksy and string-heavy. Her ESC performance begins with Rosa playing a guitar, though the guitar appears to be pre-recorded. Rosa is the only one on stage for this performance, so it’s difficult to identify specific instruments when only considering this performance. In Rosa’s live performance of “Snap” on The Late Late Show with James Corden, her band is visible with various instruments, including strings and percussion (Linn, 2020). One of the instruments appears to be a kamancha, which is a traditional Armenian string instrument resembling a violin.

Connection to National Identity

As Armenia’s national identity concerns its past with the USSR and ties to Russia as well as its goals to maintain newer ties with the West, Rosa’s performance of “Snap” seems to walk this line of being palatable to Westernized countries in that it uses English as the only language and discusses mental health issues. As there was representation of Armenian instruments, there did seem to be some sort of appreciation for elements of more traditional aspects of Armenian culture without over-emphasizing these elements in a way that seems inauthentic (simulation) or an erasure of other important aspects (essentialism). The focus on mental health caters to international audiences in a way that may strive to blur the boundaries between nations and build a more cosmopolitan identity for Armenia, in that both the nation and its members would fit in seamlessly to the community shared by Western Europe. While one of Rosa’s personal reasons for writing the song was to be a response to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, this was not reflected in her performance on the Eurovision stage.

Conclusion

Rosa Linn’s performance of “Snap” on the international stage of the 2022 Eurovision Song Contest was in alignment with Armenia’s national identity as a whole. It’s difficult to walk the line between being “traditional” and catering to the West, as it can be easy to either erase all non-Western elements of a nation's culture or to represent it inauthentically. Rosa seemed to balance the two sides of Armenia’s identity in her performance by singing an English-language song with traditional Armenian instruments. Her focus on the universal experience of mental health struggles served to present Armenia as a Western country while still maintaining connection to aspects of traditional Armenian culture.

Works Cited

Antonyan, A. (2022, May 10). 10 facts about Rosa Linn. VNews. https://www.vnews.am/culture/post/10-past-Rosa-Linni-masin

Atanesyan, A. V., Reynolds, B. M. & Mkrtichyan, A. E. (2023, January 28). Balancing between Russia and the West: the hard security choice of Armenia. European Security. https://doi.org/10.1080/09662839.2023.2258528

Destination Eurovision. (2022, May 8). Press Question: Rosa Linn (Armenia Eurovision 2022) [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Maz-hlh4pfY&ab_channel=DestinationEurovision

EBU. (n.d.). Armenia. Eurovision Song Contest. https://eurovision.tv/country/armenia

EBU. (2022, March 11). Armenia: Rosa Linn will head to Turin. Eurovision Song Contest. https://eurovision.tv/story/armenia-rosa-linn-will-head-to-turin

Eurovoix. (2022, April 21). Armenia: Who Is Rosa Linn? Eurovoix News. https://eurovoix.com/2022/04/21/armenia-who-is-rosa-linn/

Linn, Rosa. “Snap.” Spotify. https://open.spotify.com/artist/46xBNx0j6cwY6sD9LgMTm1?si=Ht a3r8ERTwCAmDCp2yIeag.

Rosa Linn [@rosalinnmusic]. (n.d). Posts [X profile]. X. Retrieved February 19, 2023, from https://twitter.com/rosalinnmusic

Rosa Linn [@rosalinnmusic]. (2020, September 2). What an honor! What a dream come true! Had a blast performing my song and sharing a bit of Armenian culture on The Late Late Show with James Corden LOVE AND PEACE!!!. https://youtu.be/Ef8T0jUdPzw [Images attached] [Post]. X. https://twitter.com/rosalinnmusic/status/1587472167918182401