Sweden – Franko says: “This is the worst thing in this contest by a country mile … I would rather listen to the Bulgarian song on loop for a whole hour than listen to this once.” He of course is a) straight and b) deluded! – Martin is FANTASTIC! – He commands the stage and sings confidently in a style that is not unlike the Melodifestival performance. However, the only issue with this song that I have is that it begins to grate on the viewers of Europe after a couple of minutes – but he does lift this intrinsically weak and normal Swedish song, into probably the usual Swedish position – 5th to 7th. Not a candidate for a winner I think – but we’ll see what happens tomorrow.
Ukraine – Much as this song means so much to so many people in this country, and I have no problem with that, I think that the dear old lady in a fisherwomans hut in Tromso will not even bother to pick the phone up for it. Out of context of this contest it is very patriotic, even with the rewrite, but that does not make it right for the contest in General. The way it is performed on stage is sort of what you would expect – Grant Mitchell’s twin comes on and points and shouts “DA” a lot down the camera – a beefy man plays the drums and 2 dancers do body popping. The Rehearsals and the Final audience will love it – the televoters, except in the neighbouring area, will probably not.
Germany… OH MY GOD! Now I know that YLE watch this blog, so if ARD or NDR are doing the same … do NOT, I repeat, NOT do this again. This is awful. Gracia does nothing but tell Europe to “run and hide” – and that is precisely what they’ll do – away from the telephone. This has no redeeming features at all. She can sing, but like so many in this years contest, just not this song. It’s “Diet Wig-wam” – compared to Wigwams “Rock-lite”. It has no substance, the stage performance is very staid with little choreography and a wind machine, making you think that it is 1985 again and light rock is in. It is very lucky that ARD pay to stay up – cos if they didn’t …
There will probably be only time for a quick look at Greece as the welcome party starts at 7pm Kyiv time – 5pm UK.
On a side note – the Finnish Lyricist came and found me by name and said “Hello – have my remix CD” – he’s a lovely chap …