Thursday, May 21, 2015

And before I leave, let me show you Tel Aviv

Disaster struck within ten minutes of me sitting down to watch the second Eurovision semi - it suddenly dawned on me that I've double-booked myself for Saturday night.  I bought a ticket for something last week without checking the dates closely enough, so now I'm going to have to make a decision about whether to miss my first Eurovision final since 1994 (and even in 1994 I managed to catch the second half, complete with Riverdance).  OK, I suppose I could just watch it on the iplayer when I get home, but that would mean having to go to Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads lengths to avoid hearing the result for several hours.  I dunno what to do.  I'm so stoopid.

Anyway, to the extent that I was actually able to concentrate on tonight's proceedings after that realisation, here are my impressions -

1) Disappointed for Ireland, but not surprised in the end.  It didn't come across as well as in the national final, possibly because she was trying to project her voice to such a huge crowd.

2) Delighted for Montenegro, and not just because they qualified.  The staging was much more powerful than I expected from having watched the rehearsal videos.  This is the first Željko Joksimović entry that hasn't really been touted as a potential winner, but I now think it could potentially do some damage (maybe top eight).

3) Serbia was the obvious qualifier that I failed to pick on Tuesday night, and tonight it was Israel.  I did have them in my initial long-list, but unfortunately that included at least fourteen of the seventeen songs.

4)  I wasn't totally convinced by Sweden's status as favourites before tonight, but now I am.  It's not my cup of tea, but I can absolutely see how people are going to pick up the phone to vote for it.  My only lingering doubts are that the main challengers (with the possible exception of Russia) are all countries that haven't performed yet, so we'll still have to see how Australia and Italy come across live.

Oh, and I'm pretty sure I caught sight of a large saltire at one point.  A DIY Eurovision presence is better than nothing, I suppose.

10 comments:

  1. No Portugal again. Will they ever win?

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  2. Replies
    1. Question : If I keep posting about the same subject for seven years, doesn't that make it on-topic rather than off-topic?

      2008 -

      http://scotgoespop.blogspot.co.uk/2008/05/prediction-for-eurovision-final.html

      2009 -

      http://scotgoespop.blogspot.co.uk/2009/05/my-prediction-for-eurovision-final.html

      2010 -

      http://scotgoespop.blogspot.co.uk/2010/05/eurovision-2010-prediction-final.html

      2011 -

      http://scotgoespop.blogspot.co.uk/2011/05/eurovision-prediction-2011-final.html

      2012 -

      http://scotgoespop.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/eurovision-2012-prediction-saturdays.html

      2013 -

      http://scotgoespop.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/eurovision-2013-prediction-for_18.html

      2014 -

      http://scotgoespop.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/my-prediction-for-eurovision-final.html

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    2. Very harsh on Emmelie de Forest, she was more than a favourite she was a Scottish folk song on Eurovision. I do wonder how Eurovision would work out if the songs were drawn by country of origin of the tune, I think Scotland would do pretty well.

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    3. Hey, very little is happening politically at the moment so it's not like he's ignoring polling developments. Nothing wrong with a little post-election break, anyway.

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  3. I'd go for the Likely Lads option!

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  4. Montenegro and Cyprus for us. We didn't see Tuesday night. Thought the Cyprus entry a breath of non-power ballad/key-shift/dancing drums fresh air. Also quite liked the Israel one. If you press the mute button on the remote instantly after the songs you still see the nice pictures but miss out the regulation BBC "isn't Johnny Foreigner quaint" voice-over.

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  5. Does anyone else think that the UK's entry by Electro Velvet (?) is a rip off of Caro Emerald's style?

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  6. I didn't care for the Swedish entry at all nor the Latvian entry either. I was sorry that the San Marino entry got the elbow. The Montenegro entry had the usual Željko Joksimović intro which I liked. Will now wait to see how the Italian and Spanish entries fare after singing live as not all singers do well singing live..

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