Hurrah! The day of the first semi-final is finally here, and it’s time for us to pick our 10 favorites. This is by no means a proper prediction, it’s the ten songs we would like to see go through to the Grand Final. And the best of luck to those who are trying to predict anything tonight, it will be carnage. As usual you can read our reviews by clicking on the links below. Enjoy the show tonight! Continue reading
We want to love Iceland. But they are not making it easy for us:
Meet Svala, the biggest pop star with the most successful career we have never heard of before!
According to reliable sources Svala is one of the biggest celebrities in her home country. She’s the daughter of someone we don’t know who is and she formed a band some ten years ago with massive international success, which we cannot remember ever to have listened to. We can only assume that either is this wonderful woman Iceland’s best kept secret, or we are absolutely clueless about what’s happening on the saga island. Most likely the latter, to be perfectly honest. Continue reading
Yay, we just attended the first dress rehearsal for the first semi-final and it is shaping up to be a fabulous show. Here’s our first impressions for you:
01 Finland Sandhja Sing It Away
We keep mixing this up with the Spanish song. Which is not a good sign in our book. Backing singers are sweeping the floor with their microphone stands. Hope they get paid by SVT.
02 Greece Argo Utopian Land
Those who think this won’t qualify are seriously deluded. Sporting steaming hot bloke who rips his shirt off towards the end. Opa!
03 Moldova Lidia Isac Falling Stars
We know we are entering into our final week psychosis when we look at each other in nodding approval for the Moldovan entry. If we can’t have Laika the lonely dog in space in Eurovision, at least we can have a hot cosmonaut doing a summersault on stage.
04 Hungary Freddie Pioneer
Stands on what appears to be a perfectly marbled entrecote, which is pretty great because we love a good steak! He’s quite beefy too, come to think of it. We’ll take him medium rare, thank you. Yum!
Last night it was time for the opening party in Stockholm! With the plebeians kept comfortably at arms length, the Eurovision stars finally got to officially meet and greet each other. But before hogging into the free champagne and finger food at the swanky City Hall, they did their schlager duty and had a stroll down the red carpet to show off their finest rags and feathers.
We did of course miss our own Agnete, which was exactly to be expected. We offered to step in, but strangely we never received a reply to that email. Oh well, it’s their loss! As the organizers obviously preferred to keep us safely behind the barriers we made the most out of it and bellowed as loud as we could to catch the stars’ attention. Here’s a few red carpet highlights for you, with pics by yours truly and our buddies over at EBU.
Ring, ring! Who’s calling Greta? That’s a question that’s been on our minds ever since she won the Söngvakeppnin final back in February. And since we’re serious journalists, we have of course embarked on a mission in getting to the bottom of this. Here’s what we found out: Continue reading
So, in true Norwegian style we did not show up in Amsterdam. We were really sad to not experience all the fabulousness that went on in Melkweg, but lucky to have good friends like Schlagerboys and ESCKAZ that shared so perfectly we almost felt like we were there anyway. A big thank you to them and here are our high- and not-so-highlights of the evening:
Most underrated performance by others:
Montenegro. We are seriously impressed that Highway even bothered showing up, knowing the hardcore fans do not exactly favour their music style and can be less than welcoming. But they just have to live with that for a while longer, because with voices like theirs, they are bound to please quite a few voters. And us, which is most important, of course. Also, you have to love a band with two vocalists.
Most surprising performance:
Greta from Iceland, starting off with a beautiful violin solo and following up with a great crowdpleaser of a schlager. Good thing Iceland has a few millions reserved for hosting an international final in a bank account in Panama.
Tonight is a big one coming up for us as Norway is on, and no less than FIVE of the guys on our hotlist. We recommend a bottle of Chardonnay, Valium and an oxygen mask within reach. If all goes well and we don’t pass out with overexcitement before the Czech Republic sings, we hope we will be able to celebrate the following ten countries going through to the Grand Final (click on the links to read our review):
For a country with a population about the size of a suburb to one of the bigger cities in continental Europe, the Icelandic never cease to impress us with a seemingly bottomless pool of talented writers, composers and artists. Meet Maria Olafs!
Sure, the seasoned Eurovision follower will notice a certain reuse and recycling, like backing singers swapping places on stage giving it a go as lead singer every once in a while, different constellations of the same composers and lyricists and so on. But they never fail to deliver a fresh entry, sounding nothing like the one from the year before, it never gets repetitive or predictable and it goes to show both creative force and a confidence we only find very appealing.