The prestigious Italian "Piccole Storie": Why is Albania's song a true and unprecedented masterpiece?!

One of the most popular websites in Italy, "Piccole Storie", has dedicated an article to Albania's Eurovision 2025 entry, "Zjerm" by Shkodra Elektronike.

The article treats "Zjerm" as a gift of this Eurovision and one of the most powerful songs of this edition. Even emphasizing that this is not just a song, but a masterpiece. 

Full text:

Eurovision 2025: why the Albanian song is a true masterpiece first and foremost

There are songs you listen to.

And then there are songs that live. That enter like an ancient whisper and reawaken something that had been forgotten. “Zjerm” – Fire – is a front tire.

It is the gift that Albania brought this year to Eurovision 2025, but it would be reductive to simply call it a "song".

It is an electronic prayer, a sacred dance, a dialogue between hope and reality, performed on stage by the Italian-Albanian duo Shkodra Elektronike: Beatriçe Gjergji and Kolë Laca.

Born in Shkodra, in northern Albania – a city where languages, religions, rituals and silences have coexisted for centuries – today they are different in Italy, but within them the voice of the mountains, rivers, memory. And that voice, in the song “Zjerm”, becomes a cry that does not make noise, but sets the heart on fire.

Beatrice dreams. Kolë observes.

The song opens with a vision.
A vision that comes from Beatrice, bright, pure, almost childlike in her stubbornness.
She asks for just one minute. Just one.
A fragment of time in which the world can take a deep breath.

“Imagine for a minute...
No soldiers
No orphans
No bottles in the ocean
Oil smells like lilacs
And speech is free
Kindness has no name
Freedom is taught in schools.”

That minute imagined by Beatrice is everything the world lacks: it is the dream of someone who knows they don't live in the right place, but who still chooses to dance, to sing, to believe.

Here she sings:

"Create a pure heart with me"
"In my night, I send you light"
"Please have mercy"

And here appears a powerful sentence, full of symbols:

"Love, have mercy"

A verse that unites two faiths,
“Aman”, an Arabic word, used in Sufi songs, in laments, in soft cries.
“Miserere”, sacred Latin, Christian prayer, prayer for forgiveness.
For the sake of peace they meet in a single universal call, which transcends borders and becomes humanity.
It is not a prayer for mercy in itself. It is a prayer for the whole world.

But immediately afterwards, Kolë takes the floor.
And he does so with the wounded voice of someone who has stopped dreaming.

"Fire falls on our tribal dances"
"Seven knives strike the soul"
"People are falling like an avalanche"
"We no longer see the stars... we have trampled them"

Kolë is the other side of hope. It is disappointment.
It speaks of a world that no longer has poetry, that has forgotten the moon, that is hungry for power and blind to beauty.
His song is not anger: it is clear pain. It is a call not to forget reality.

And just when everything seems out of place...
Beatrice returns to singing.

"In my heart, good people,
nameless people,
they dance in the valley of the soul"

"Jarna ne'tu, my land...
Keep shining
Shine, shine"

The Fire of Zjerm is not the one that destroys.
It is the fire that purifies, that illuminates, that saves.
It is the flame that stays alive when everything around it is extinguished.
It is the fragile strength of those who continue to dance, even on the ruins.

“Heart” is Beatrice's minute.
The minute that we all, deep down, desire.
The minute that the world stops…
…and for a moment he truly breathes.

With an unprecedented fusion of electronics and tradition, poetry and spirituality, the Albanian song is not only the most powerful of this Eurovision: it is an experience.

Neither meditation nor music.
An act of love for what humanity has lost.
A silent but unpleasant invitation