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Well children of Europe, wasn’t that exciting last night! (unless you are reading this in March in which case, who knows, I’m not psychic!)
Your ten qualifiers
| Country | Performer | Song | Position in running order |
|---|---|---|---|
| Latvia | Tautumeitas | Bur man laimi | Producer's Choice |
| Armenia | Parg | Survivor | Second Half |
| Austria | JJ | Wasted Love | First Half |
| Greece | Klavdia | Asteromata | Producer's Choice |
| Lithuania | Katarsis | Tavo akys | Producer's Choice |
| Malta | Miriana Conte | Serving | Producer's Choice |
| Denmark | Sissal | Hallucination | Second Half |
| Luxembourg | Laura Thorn | La poupée monte le son | First Half |
| Israel | Yuval Raphael | New Day Will Rise | Producer's Choice |
| Finland | Erika Vikman | Ich komme | First Half |
There were a couple of shocks for me here.
Lithuania at the top was a massive shock. I fully expected pretty boy goth rock to fall flat on its face but the diaspora may have had something to do with it – who knows?! Greece was also a shocker. A song that was etherial in nature sung by your geography teacher? I nearly fell out of my chair. And then there was Denmark. I had got it going through… because you had to have ten into the next round, right? But it makes my skin crawl every time I see it.
So what of those songs we loved and lost?
Australia raised the biggest guffaw in OnEurope towers. This “song” should never have been near this contest and is, for me, emblematic of SBS at Eurovision. They started strong then lost the plot and have fallen off a cliff. Montenegro died cos of its staging and, let’s be honest, the song wasn’t good enough. Ireland flattered to deceive. I thought Emmy had pulled it off, and would scrape through. She might be 11th for all we know at this stage. Georgia was trying too hard to be neutral and just failed.
I feel sorry for Adonxs from Czechia the most. This had the potential to get a really decent placing in the final, but it fell foul of the televote and I’m not sure why or how. The performance seemed OK but I think there was a disconnect between the meaning of the song shown exquisitely in the preview video and what we saw last night. I still think the dance break was just a device to pad out the song get to three minutes, failing that, I’m stunned and gutted. Equally gutted for Serbia as well. Princ’s song was from another era at Eurovision, but I thought that, again, it would just squeak through… sadly my heart was smashed into a thousand pieces.
So what of the next two days? Well Mr Nick is currently, at time of writing, being entertained with the press preview of the final, and he has threatened another stream of consciousness post.
I’m doing the very long live blog of the Jury Final tonight, and there might be an extra one on Saturday afternoon (considering I’m stuck here at home) before the big show on Saturday night.