London Calling – Web judges latest Eurovision party

By
Mo Fanning
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London Eurovision Party 2019

Each year, the Cafe de Paris in London plays host to a brilliant Eurovision pre-party. It’s a smaller venue than the Amsterdam or Madrid shows, and offers a chance to get up close and personal.

The web has been a-buzzing with feedback. What one person saw as flawless, others sound distinctly off-key. Keeping in mind, this is a very different show to what we’ll see beamed from Tel Aviv, let’s have a skim through Twitter, Facebook and various message boards.

Norwegian KEiiNO earned praise across the board for ‘Spirit in the sky’ and because you’ve heard that already, here’s a clip of them singing something different.

Italian Mahmood has been picking up great reviews for ‘Soldi’ – as well as topping many fan polls. Once again, Italy is one to watch. As is the bloke in the bottom right of the screen, who clearly doesn’t know as many of the words as he wants us to think.

Lake Malawi enjoyed a warm reception with plenty of crowd participation for ‘Friend of Friend’. And if you’d like to sing along …

By contrast, the crowd tended to show  less enthusiasm for the Latvian smooth jazz of Carousel, with most of the crowd talking through their performance. Although to be fair, there’s a nice bit of head-swaying too.

Jonida Maliqi probably struggled to get the crowd singing along, but one guy was in love with her … and his phone.

And to round up, a few short clips of other well-received performances …

Obviously, it wouldn’t be fair not to showcase the home team, so here’s Michael Rice, giving it his all and winning over the room with ‘Bigger than us’. Bonus points if you can make out a word of what he says before the backing track kicks in.