It's Eurovision week. First semi final is done. Semi final 2 is on Thursday and the Grand Final is on Saturday. Share your thoughts on this year's contest here.
I'll start. Mixed bag from the qualifiers from SF1. Sad for Azerbaijan and Slovenia. Totally gutted for Belgium. Surprised by Iceland, Norway and Portugal's qualifications. Shocked about Ukraine. Everyone else was deserved. Especially Poland and Sweden
I only watch the finals. It means I am hit with the full force of new "over the top", "Full camp" or "Dreary Ballad" Euro-cheese, and thus can deliver my honest review to the friends discord we have set up each year.
Second Semi final was a bit better. Pretty much all the ones I wanted to qualify from that one did. Especially happy with Latvia as they were the one I was most worried about not getting through. Only disappointment was Lithuania getting through. That was just depressive screaming. Looking forward to the grand final tomorrow
Now this is a thread I can get behind! Some thoughts:
- JJ absolutely deserved his win. Wasted Love has been on my playlist since it came out and he didn't disappoint. - The voting in the final was really weird. Israel (politics aside) and Estonia absolutely should not have been up there considering how good Italy, France, and Finland were. Switzerland getting 0 points from the public?!?!?!?! Insanity. - Gutted that Red Sebastian and Go-Jo didn't make it to the semi finals. - Baby Lasagna and Kaarija showed us why they were fan favourites. Such a fun interval act and absolutely demolished Nemo's new single.
Interesting jury votes, & it got right down to the last public vote to decide the winner.
I do think the newer way of announcing the public makes things much more interesting to watch.
Surprised the UK got no public vote despite getting 88 from the juries.
My fave remained Norway (poor thing only received 89 votes), with my 'comedy selection' being Estonia (which came third with 356 votes, only one vote behind Israel in second place).
I also liked Iceland, who only managed 33 votes, but at least they weren't in last place.
Nobody received the dreaded 'Nil points' this year.
Well, that was an intense final result. Now the dust has settled a bit, Let's look at the results. First, Let's talk about the elephant in the room. Israel almost winning. I know it's a song contest and music should come before politics, and it was an ok song, but it wasn't winning material and for them to get so many points from the public given their current situation in the world, I really do wonder about what the voting public are thinking. It doesn't send a very good message. Speaking of which, the public votes were savage and quite surprising. A lot of fan favourites didn't do as well as expected, especially Sweden, who were tipped to absolutely wipe the floor this year. Also us and Switzerland getting 0 points from the public was brutal, especially the latter. That was honestly one of the best host songs in ages. Which brings me to my next point. The difference between the juries and the public this year was staggering. Seeing big jury hitters getting low scores was crazy and sometimes a little hard to watch, but at the same time it was nice to see low jury scorers getting high public scores and jumping up the scoreboard. Going back to the jury scores, it was interesting and honestly quite nice to see the 12 points given out to a lot of different countries and made things a bit more exciting. Some nice surprises from that were us getting 12 points from Italy, Latvia getting a couple of 12s and even Germany got a couple of 12s. Finally, I'm quite happy with the winner, Austria. I thought he did an amazing job and tha voice was something else. My personal favourite, Poland didn't do great overall but she won over the public. Other results I'm happy about are Greece, Estonia, Sweden and Albania. Israel, France and Italy were a bit overrated but it is what it is. Off to Vienna/Salzburg/(insert other random Austria city name) next year then.
Love you, too
