🇷🇴 Theodor Andrei "D.G.T. (Off and On)" REACTION | Romania | Eurovision 2023

[@erinnadia0409]

I actually loved this! His voice is great and you can't judge the home country performances as they don't have the budget for a massive production yet. I think his voice is so good

[@womantoday6576]

Vocally he is very good, the lyrics are a mind game and the story is catchy. As for the girls, don't find them all that different from Spain last year's representation. The lack of clothes for him and other boys is actually representing the story of this girl that plays him on her fingers (DGT = degete = fingers) because in Romanian there is actually a saying that states "iei camaşa de pe mine" (take my shirt off) when you play bad and hard someone. This song screams interesting and sassy and he is very charismatic! This is a 12 points song and performance!

[@espotpod]

He did the creative direction for this performance! Not bad for an 18 year old!

[@danieleclementi3310]

I really like this, it stands out and I cannot understand how people don't see how effing good he is live and on stage

[@ESCTom]

yea same, when i was watching the show, it was VERY obvious he was the best performer, and this is coming from someone who didnt really have a big favourite going into the final

[@Marina.Menezes]

I was thrilled that Theodor won, it is such a banger, so different from all the other Romanian entries. I currently have him 4th on the Eurovision Scoreboard app. I didn't know he's 18! He's so confident, just owns the stage, I think with a little bit more polish he will do really well in Liverpool!

[@ESCTom]

some people just have it, and he has it

[@Hydraas]

The backing dancer's costume change was because there was a bright white flash during the live broadcast so they cut in a rehearsal clip in the official release

[@popsr8270]

i LOVE romania this year, thank you for this reaction!!!

[@negrilamona4276]

Thank you for your reaction! 😁 Unfortunately, he received a lot of unwarranted hate. This is sad. He is a very charismatic guy and I strongly believe that the staging will be polished, because it was a little bit messy. But I believe that everything will be ok for the big show! 😁

[@ESCTom]

yea it will be neatened up a little for Eurovision, but there were good ideas. And honestly, he was the only good performance in the national final, everyone else just fell apart

[@negrilamona4276]

@@ESCTom yes, I agree with you! He was the best from what we had. I voted for him! 😁

[@tarotheart06]

At least someone gets the fact that this was the only performance from the national final that was good. Everyone else had no energy, nothing... He also said that he will upgrade the staging so, I believe it will be better for the eurovision. Thanks for your reaction 🥰

[@nutotiziaristisuntcorecti184]

@@negrilamona4276 a mai fost cineva bun

[@fngprs]

Theodor has stated that him performance and song will be greatly revamped, so we are hoping we are getting in a banger. Btw: DGT is an abbreviation for the word DeGeTe,which means finger referring to how a woman has someone at their fingertips.

[@observatorgoogle7502]

I really love the song and I am glad he won🥰

[@katariinamagi7460]

I actually love this song. Completely agree that he just seems such a performer, like born for the stage. Kind of feel like that. My favourite was also statues but yeah after seeing the first live performance i kind of knew that was not gonna happen. I was so surprised when i found out that he had won, because usually my favourites kind of don’t win. But yes i am so happy about this song. And i really don’t get the hate. But i think it’s important to keep in mind that everyone has their favourites and it sucks when yours doesen’t win but such is life xd. In some national finals your favourite does win. ❤ Love the song personally xd

[@ESCTom]

well the scary thing is that even with the quite bad performance of Statues, it still almost won! that 100% would not have qualified, it was really quite messy

[@clapclap5452]

The camera had glitches in the finals show so they replaced the ending with some rehearsel, such a shame, everyone stops there, better let the glitches and the original moment. This won’t be the Eurovision staging, it is just for internal selection

[@mihaelatenea9489]

What a performer! Winner alert!😲🥳

[@catalinaf.4082]

Thank you for this great reaction!!! For me personally, I met Theo through social media and he seems like such a genuine and amazing person, he's graduated the best highschool for arts and he's also an actor, thus the love for theatre/musicals. But what I appreciate the most is his personality and I feel like fans are really going to love him during pre-parties season. He's also extremely inteligent, if you feel like listening one of his interviews with English subtitles, you'll see what I mean. I'm rambling but even though this song is not for everybody and the odds don't look too good, I'll support him regardless, I couldn't be more proud of our rep this year.

[@nina-sg5ix]

🤗🥰

[@ESCTom]

yea you can definitely see that theatre background, he's got that ability to perform really well and keep the attention, while being able to move between different parts of the stage really well. he was the most talented performer at the final, and i think thats why he won

[@catalinaf.4082]

@@ESCTom oh yes, I did attend Selectia Nationala as part of the audience and no one came close to his performance, he left us quite speechless in the room after he performed (although we did cheer for him 😁)

[@cherrycolouredshades]

thanks for the reaction!! D.G.T. pronounced in Romanian "degete" means fingers, and he means that the person he's talking about plays him on their fingers

[@ioanrujan5333]

Great job, Power , wow 12 points

[@TheManInBlueFlames]

Theodor is an AMAZING performer. He has natural energy and you can tell from his smile that he ENJOYs performing. This song is a good way to show off the variety in his vocals and therefore should qualify in May. His staging may need a little bit of work, but even if this were the final product, we can extract the two or three different lyrical meanings of the song from it. All he really needs are some lighting and pyro at the end.

[@ESCTom]

Yea pyro would work with this, especially with the final costume reveal

[@alexhodder4129]

I absolutely fucking love this and I hope the EBU allows this sort of staging ik ik family friendly maybe not but neither was Iceland 2019, he is so likable and talented needs to be neatened up but with a 100% televote this is going to qualify comfortably on the performance alone and the song is good

[@ESCTom]

yea the main thing is neatening it up. keep the rawness of the performance, but trim the edges so there's nothing sloppy looking

[@TheManInBlueFlames]

He doesn't even need it! He can perform on his own and still get a place in the Grand Final!

[@annamarria19]

❤️ Good luck Theodor

[@heylinsworld6673]

I didn't know it was getting a lot of hate online! That's unfortunate and really undeserved. I always liked the song, I thought it had a lot of potential and I'm so happy it worked live. Theatre kids! they know how to sell a performance. I think the acting background also helps him to sell it despite not being note perfect. No one cares when you're performing the hell out of it. It wasn't my winner straight away but I think the more I saw of it the more I started rooting for it to win in the end. It's so cool that he was involved in the staging as well. He seems to be a very talented kid.

[@ESCTom]

omg crazy amounts of hate. i dont know if its cos they wanted Aledaida or just cos its not a standard pop song, but theres loads of people shitting on it. you can see in the app that its second last. yea youre totally right about the theatre kids. i think people forget how much being a good performer helps with a performance!!! 😂

[@espotpod]

There were technical problems during the live and they spliced in the rehearsal tape!

[@ESCTom]

ah that make sense, i thought it was some epic magic trick

[@espotpod]

@@ESCTom nope just the network not having their shit together. Did you see the screen during ocean drive shut down completely and had a calibration image for half the performance?

[@sunnynova6]

Thank you so much for your beautiful words, hugs from Romania!

[@ducris]

Romanians love complaining about their own country. They were complaining about WRS winning last year and Dora not qualifying. Then when all Europe praised him they all started to back him up lol

[@anka6356]

Yeah, they didn't use the whole live footage, had to mix in from the rehearsal because the camera work was not great. That's the "magic trick".

[@ioanrujan5333]

Like song România, New rewamp and winner

[@vvvgeorgevvv8201]

We need a good staging because we have a good artist. When you said "burlesque" I was like: yeah! Why not!? Burlesque but with drag queens and that is Eurovision for you. :)))

[@lidiaciocirlan9864]

Best song 2023!

[@thedanimenezes]

He was my favourite already and I really like the performance. I agree with you it needs to be more polished, there's maybe too much going on and could distract from his vocals, that are in fact very good.

[@Povejmikatrina]

I love the song, it was my winner and I'm overjoyed that it won. He's a great performer and such a humble and down to earth guy, he's replying to every comment he gets and actually listens to criticism. They definitely need to tone down the staging though, because it's just too much and too messy.

[@ESCTom]

yea, and theyve got loads of time to work on that too. it definitely needs some editing

[@leendertjanw7540]

I like him as a performer, he's got the voice and the charisma, and it's impressive that he's done this all by himself at just 18. The song is catchy and stands out. I don't care that much for the lingerie show in the background and the guys reminding me of the body I used to have lots of years ago, so I guess that could have a bit of polishing. It's likeable enough all in all, although I doubt it will be one of this year's faves for me. That being said, I didn't care for "Llámame" that much and in the end he's in my top 10 for last year, so who knows Theodor? 😉

[@ESCTom]

yea polishing and editing should be their top 2 priorities for the next couple of months

[@stevenkendall3092]

He said in an interview that D.G.T. stands for degete ("fingers") in Romanian.

[@vladuzz7]

yeah, "Ma joaca pe D.G.T ( degete)" which means something like She plays with you on her fingers". Like an acronym :D

[@mariacorlan6520]

România 💕

[@bitterblue8115]

Poor Theodor... now instead of people reacting to this cool song and his great vocals... are thrown off by TVR's incompetence and crappy editing smh

[@ESCTom]

lol its ok, i still enjoyed the performance a lot. that part just threw me off because I thought that they have done an amazing magic trick and i was wondering how it was done. 😂

[@speryyt]

D.G.T. stand for Degete who means fingers and he sing how a girl play him on the fingers which in Romania is an expression for playing with him.

[@alipanroosendaal9503]

The community hating this seems kind of odd, especially considering some of the songs that they rate. The performance is chaotic, but he can at least sing.

[@ESCTom]

yea it seems a bit exaggerated for me too. i think this reaction is more likely to happen when a favourite is beaten. honestly i didnt think there was anything particulalry standout song-wise and everyone else's performances were either medium or very bad. he won because he was the only one able to perform well

[@alipanroosendaal9503]

@@ESCTom Agreed Tom. Fans do seem to get very precious about their favourites missing out, and as if it's his fault.

[@silviahannak3213]

Rock is about to shock. Others wear weird stuff, he just did a bold move to emphasize with his Voice. Like that 'she' he is singing about "tears him apart" Kind of. You skipped before the End where he goes real high.

[@ioanrujan5333]

Romania top 10

[@gazevedo1025]

this would’ve been fun to have this year (2024) but Romania saw the future and backed out early lol 😅

[@mariahothman9362]

Like your reaktion! I like song too !

[@beandrag9019]

I miss Romania’s borderline hyper pop era. That toreno/ let me try phase was iconic

[@ESCTom]

yea that was their successful period where it felt like they were living in the top 10. i think pop music moved on from that though, those type of entries wouldnt do well now

[@joumanashead1722]

Absolutely loved this song, his performance and vocals, such a charismatic singer who I’m really hoping will do well! I found the backup dancers and how out of sync they were super off-putting though, it made the whole performance seem much messier and honestly too busy. I think just one female backup dancer rather than the two of them would make more sense for the story and would eliminate some of those messiness problems too.

[@ESCTom]

yea there was an element of it being TOO chaotic. organised chaos would be better. honestly now hes picked, im sure he'll be given access to the best dancers hopefully

[@adrianneagoe3652]

DGT is short for degete which means fingers

[@ESCTom]

aaaaaaah nice, thanks, i did a search but couldnt find it. google was suggesting it meant "Dont go there" 😅

[@andreeadianab1281]

DGT = degete which means fingers "Ma joaca pe degete" it's a saying which translated would mean something like she is playing me

[@elaela2754]

Do you know that DGT comes from Romanian degete which comes from digitis in Latin (only in Romanian the word that means fingers comes from Latin . The rest of Latin countries use a different word for fingers...

[@ESCTom]

interestingly, we use the word "digits" when we talk about fingers in a medical sense in English

[@elaela2754]

@@ESCTom medical field has words from Latin

[@bastbats1952]

I'm not getting used to this Tom from Dublin, I've been conditioned to expect other places lol

[@ESCTom]

Haha I’m getting better at it. I haven’t accidentally said Shanghai in a while now

[@viravirakti]

6:30 There was a strong flash light at that moment, in the original video on TVR, probably intentional, not a technical issue. Maybe the Eurovision team removed it in order to protect the epileptics.

[@ESCTom]

no it was because there were technical difficulties with the final performance, so they needed to use some of the rehearsal footage, where the dancer was wearing different clothes

[@viravirakti]

@@ESCTom There was no interruption or observable difficulty in the live performance; the short, stong light was the only thing which appeared in the original video. You can watch it on the TVR KZbin. I didn't even noticed it until it was changed for the Eurovision channel. So, it's interesting that it was modified only for that reason. Like I said, it can only be explained as way of preventing epileptic seasures. Talking about light...

[@lighthouse620]

One of the few guarantees in eurovision is that Selectia Nationala is always good craic

[@ESCTom]

thats true. never short of drama 😅

[@johnmoynahan874]

Hmmmmm........this is a no from me. I'm really struggling this year so far. Czechia has the only song so far that i can get behind. Oh, maybe Slovenia too. This song just isn't my style. As a performance i can appreciate the talent on offer but as a song?......not for me! Having said that WRS totally went under the radar for me until i saw him live in Torino. Then it ended up as one of my most listened to entries of 2022, so I'm not dismissing this out of hand but loads of elevation required before it becomes a genuine contender for me. Sorry Romania 😢

[@ESCTom]

it does seem like there is a much bigger quantity of performance pieces rather this music entries this year compared to normal. but weve only 15/37 songs and all the internal selections yet to come so dont lose hope. plus youve all the great NF songs that didnt win

[@johnmoynahan874]

@ESC Tom that much is true 20 downloads from national finals but only 1 as yet from the 15 selected songs. Hopefully that ratio will improve 🤞🏻🤞🏻

[@alexhodder4129]

I knew you would attach yourself to czechia as much as I do enjoy czechias song it's not my type of music I thing we just enjoy completely different music because atm I'm loving the lineup

[@TheManInBlueFlames]

@@ESCTom I think it's because people hype up certain songs and then they perform poorly live, so they choose the next best thing, someone who CAN perform.

[@johnmoynahan874]

@Alex Hodder that's the beauty of the institution we all love Alex. Differences of opinion is welcomed always

[@beandrag9019]

Yeah no they ABSOLUTELY need to get rid of the backup dancers that gave me really weird incel vibes. No offense meant to him because he seems like a lovely guy. Definitely appreciate this song for trying something different

[@ESCTom]

yea i can kind of see what you mean. something about it is a little bit awkward and im not really sure what it adds. I get the song is about being played by a girl, but i dont really get why they chose those costumes

[@bsev1232]

My opinion as a romanian. I belive a lot of the incel looking stageng is becouse romania is very heteronormativ. Wrs and this kid have "the bisexual vibes" (also wrs was seen on grinder idk if andrei is in the same situation) a lot of singers is they dans with other guys, they need to overcompensate with "atractive looking girls". A lot of they romanian objectivication of woman is also a way to get away from "looking gay" acusations becouse here is dangerous to be lgbt. Long hair ir flamboyant looks are not respected here and acusations of being gay or outing you as gay are no joke. Very sad.

[@beandrag9019]

@@bsev1232 that makes a lot of sense. Thank you for your comment

[@madalinabalauta]

Here is the version with full English version! kzbin.info/www/bejne/ameVfaWBbq9jaMU

[@АлексейЗаботкин-т1х]

Remember when Romania was one of few countries who always qualified? Me neither

[@Noksus]

What's up with that China shirt/jacket?

[@ESCTom]

I lived there 4 years

[@Noksus]

@@ESCTom Cool!

[@cultfiction3865]

I’m trying my hardest to appreciate this song, but it’s not something I would normally listen to. I really Like the staging and the burlesque girls give some kick to the grungey theme. So it’s half way there already. The song doesn’t progress in the way I would prefer. It’s like it opens with a bang but doesn’t fully capatilise on that potential as the song continues. This isn’t really my style of music and overall I think this was a bad choice for them. But we will see.

[@ESCTom]

yea i do associate this type of music with having a more steady flow instead of a big pop drop or key change like some of the more pop songs. but yea a small revamp is possible because Romania have done that in the past

[@Crowleas]

Ahahahaaa I 've been watching you for years and really enjoying your videos but seriously here we are hitting extremes of disagreement. You thought these 3 minutes flew by? For me it's an everlasting torture! I really struggled to listen to the whole thing. Unbearable for both the eyes and the ears. Did you find him likable? For me the biggest flaw of this generally very flawed entry is that the guy is extremely dislikable and annoying! Is he untalented? No. Is he a bad singer? No. Is he boring, dull, stiff? No. He is just unbearable. But to be honest the song itself is soooooo horrible. I don't know if any performer could save it. So the combo of an annoying song and an annoying performer is just deadly. A complete disaster. PS: an other huge disagreement. You said 2005 was a weak year? Seriously?? For me it's one of the strongest EVER! If not THE strongest. Romania had a great entry in 2005 BUT it wasn't in my top10 of the year. Neither was Greece or Malta. 3 wonderful entries but there were 10 entries even better than these 3. 2005 was a great song parade. I have to admit though that many of the presentations were not equally good. Bad live vocals and wrong stagings ruined quite a few amazing songs. But still the studio versions line-up is absolutely epic.