Justs

By Mandy Rogers

When Serena our own resident EQ Eurovision tastemaker for this year, raised the profile of Latvia’s contender in Justs Sirmais, I literally could have died quite happily from all the palpitations that immediately reared up inside of me, that we’ve found a new artist in our sights worthy enough of bestowing the Electroqueer title on. Justs has the EQ factor! He does!

Honestly, Europe hasn’t given me a new artist favourite in so long, but then Justs came along and he’s changed all that with his tremendous debut “Heartbeat”.

Quite a lot of the credit goes to Latvia’s 2015 ESC participant Aminata Savadogo who is the creative force behind Justs powerful track, but you know with the quivering rasp in his voice there is something so heart-leapingly apparent that he’s got the beginnings of a justifiably pop defined career ahead of him.

Commanding the Stockholm Eurovision stage dressed in a black leather and denim combo, the young Latvian had our EQ hearts melting, even before he indulged us into the full power driven embrace of his vocals taking effect! You might well have seen us make excitable comments like “SWOON” and “That Face” on our Viber chat on Saturday evening, we make no apologies for that, it was just us speaking truth with our eyes!!

There were too many Eurovision casualties this year, because of a particularly strong turn-out. It especially seemed to me the majority of countries were really hungry to bag the top prize than ever before too. As much as we tell ourselves it is a song for Europe competition, the sorry matter remains other world issues still make their impact felt, with tactical voting and such. Unfortunately, there is no immediate resolve on this, we all know it exists and sadly as much as we strive for change, it continues to play a part.

I’m not saying there was anything politically reflective in Justs mid-table 15th position placing, but the affects that rippled through the entire show might have had seen the admirable performance go under the radar far more than it deserved.

I can enlighten you this much, this will NOT be the last you hear of Justs on EQ though, I’m polishing my stan badge as I write! Oh and by the looks of it right now on Justs Facebook, he is fronting a Beats by Dre campaign in Latvia, so he’s really turned into Latvia’s over-night popstar hasn’t he!