Through an internal selection process, France chose Slimane’s song “Mon amour” for the 2024 competition. France was the first country this year to release their Eurovision entry way back in November of 2023 – that’s only 8 months after their 2023 entry was released! As part of the Big Five countries, France automatically has a spot in the final. Although Slimane will be in the final, he will be performing right after Czechia in the second semifinal (5.5th).

This entry feels like a combination of last year’s entries from Italy and France. You have the soulful male ballad à la Marco Mengoni, and the visual aesthetics of a human disco ball like La Zarra. See diagram below:

You can usually count on Italy or at least Switzerland to send a male ballad, but this year Italy is sending Angelina Mango’s pop bop “La Noia” and Switzerland is breaking that code. So we’re glad that France stepped up to the plate.

The music video is a work of art in and of itself: it’s all one shot, the lighting is exceptional and simple, and Slimane (mostly) keeps our attention the whole 3 minutes. The lyrics to “Mon Amour” aren’t anything new, just a man asking the simple question “do you love me or not?” The studio recording of the song is beautiful with rich vocals and pared-down instrumentals that really highlight its emotional qualities.

C likes this song a lot because it’s sung slow enough for her to understand all the French lyrics, and it falls into the soulful love song category that makes her question why she doesn’t move to Europe. While U does not have the entertainment of trying to understand the lyrics and overall finds the entry a bit boring, she is glad it exists given how classically stereotypical a Eurovision entry it is. The contest wouldn’t be complete without it.

This song will be dead in the water if he can’t truly sing it live. However, the clips we’ve seen of Slimane performing live at the Eurovision Pre-Parties are promising and give us hope that he can pull it off. As one of the few male ballads this year, it has the chance to be impactful even though it is not groundbreaking.