OK, quite a lot of spoilers if you are intent on remaining unknowing until Saturday, but without giving too much away, tonight was a TRAVESTY (hahaha, i was on the internet in minutes, registering my disgust!), and there are three songs that RLY RLY should have got through. One more little comment before the cut though. Dear BBC, if you are going to put subtitles on the programme, please to be translating the non-english songs into english first!!! I need to know if the words in foreign are quite as dreadful as some of the ones in English, innit.
Hear all the songs/watch the videos on the eurovision website
Right then, here are my comments/scores written as we went through all TWENTY EIGHT songs, KC means Key Change and automatically gets the song an extra point.
Bulgaria – appalling percussion travesty 2
Israel – Not as good as it should be, a bit “comedy” 5
Cyprus – Eurogoth disco in French 4
Belarus – sub-Bond theme, bad singer KC 5
Iceland – Lordi sans make-up, Scorpions sans talent, shocking, shocking lyrics 2
Georgia – bludy great!!! all over the place, in a good way, stadium sugarcubes 9
Montenegro – is it 1987 again? he’s quite cute though, more bad rock, quite catchy, missing a key change 6
Switzerland – bad lady voice, no real tune, bobo is a twat 2
Moldova – fiddle! good choreography, shit song KC 2
Netherlands – trad eurodisco stomper KC 6
Albania – most albanian entry ever, proper dirge ballad, touch of asia, “teardrops that you shit for me”, missing a key change 7
Denmark – GAYGAYGAY, tranny eurodisco KC 8
Croatia – croatian chris rea + croatian cher = RUB 2
Poland – aqua without the intelligence, dreadful euro-rap (later discovered to be by a brit), time changes, Polish Xstina 5
Serbia – lesbi-ballad! KC 5
Czech Republic – more crap rock, bass player’s mic is too loud, appalling 1
Portugal – fans, bossadisco, incredibly bland and average, KC 5
FYR Macedonia – dry ice, ballet, rly weird time sig, very long lags, english verse at end 6
Norway – Geri with a voice, livin the vida loca, KC, unexpected dress removal!!! 9
Malta – fiddle, gong, topless dancers, Terry will like this, 6
Andorra – BUSTED! JUMP!!! KC 10
Hungary – good props, v odd bluesrock, actually quite good 6
Estonia – terrible cliched lyrics, dull mid-tempo nothingness 3
Belgium – 70s disco, vocoder, bad singing, shame as it’s not a bad song 4
Slovenia – goth opera ballad mid-tempo, archetypal slovenian, lights on hand, KC 4
Turkey – creepy electro ricky matin, obligatory “ethnic” middle eight 4
Austria – just rubbish, s&m chickens 3
Latvia – G4 G6! rly not normal, missing Chess song, this could do very very well, KC 7
Ridiculously, Norway, Denmark and ANDORRA are all OUT!!! The ten qualifiers are:
Bulgaria
Belarus
Georgia
Moldova
Serbia
FYR Macedonia
Hungary
Slovenia
Turkey
Latvia
What do almost all these countries (except one) have in common??? also Turkey only got through because their bloke has had like a gazillion number ones, so will have done well with the diaspora and Latvia were last on which always bodes well. I would have picked some of the ten myself (i voted for georgia even, thinking they would need it), but the bulgarian, belarussian and moldovan ones are all dreadful.
The Danish one had TWO key changes so did that get an extra bonus point?
Apparently there is already talk of some Western European countries pulling out next year…
andorra blimmin robbed.
No Andorra is a bit of a shock – it is a terrific song. No Switzerland is even more shocking – admittedly it is goth toss, but it was goth toss with quite short odds to win.
I wonder if we can move to blind voting, where the countries are not named (though this throws in language and “national dress” issues).
No Poland? Their song was grebt! I am sad.
Luckily Ukraine = automatic qualifiers. They’re my tip this year.
Recovered from spam bin…
I voted for:
Bulgaria (rub song, but loved the energy of the performance. Neil Peart in Eurovision = works for me)
Belgium (I larffed non stop)
Poland
FYR Macedonia
There were other songs I liked more, but assumed (wrongly as it turned out) that they were a cinch to go through.
The one good thing about this debacle is that most of the turgid hard rock failed to qualify too (so that’s the end of the Lordi effect then heh).
Overall quality of songs = much higher than most commentators had led me to believe. There were about 12 songs that were “any good at all”, I thought. And most of the 14 authomatic qualifiers sound pretty good too. I also liked the variety of music in the semi-final. Even if most of the rock songs were terrible, I was in a strange way happy that Eurovision was embracing rock more.
Test
OK that worked. Why did the long post I just typed disapperar then? Grrr [ed: Jeff, if you are registered and post while logged in, you won’t get caught in the spam filter now]
Here’s a shorter version. I voted for:
Bulgaria (rub song, but loved the energy of the performance. Neil Peart solo in Eurovision = yay!)
Belgium (I larffed non stop)
Poland
FYR Macedonia
There were better songs than the above 4 but I assumed, wrongly, that they were all a cinch to go through.
Politics not a factor at Eurovision, idiot researcher says.
that is SHOCKING “research”. self-selecting euro-nuts saying they vote for the song, rather than the politics, quelle surprise, but they’re only like 0.0005% of the voters at best.
Steve ARE YOU WOGAN?
Bulgaria was our favourite in the whole thing! I liked Georgia too but Isabel didn’t.