I can't hold back, I can't go back, I must be free

Some Eurovision semi-finals are extremely predictable, some produce thrills and spills, and tonight's was definitely in the latter category. I was wrong about three of the ten qualifiers I had pencilled in, but they weren't the three I thought I might be wrong about (if that makes sense). One of the biggest shocks was Norway's elimination. I'd always had mixed feelings about the song, though - I thought the chorus was very strong, but the rest of it was excruciatingly bad (especially the lyrics). Albania's failure has taken most people by surprise as well, although to be fair it was the performer who was considered impressive, rather than the song itself.

I'm pleased that my gut feeling that Switzerland might just sneak through was borne out, and I'm absolutely delighted to be proved wrong in leaving Hungary off my list. It was undoubtedly the class entry of the field, although I still don't hold out a lot of hope for it in the final. As for myself, I ended up voting for both Poland and Serbia - that was down to the language issue, but I must admit the Polish song has really grown on me, and I was a bit sad that it didn't make the cut.

Nothing I saw changed my view that this is the weakest Eurovision in terms of musical quality since Stockholm in 2000, but the staging can cover up a multitude of sins, and it was an enjoyable show. Roll on the delights of Thursday...which may or may not include Jedward. Here they come, here they come, dum da dum da dum da dum.

Eurovision 2011 prediction : Tuesday's semi-final

I've been so wrapped up in the Holyrood election and its aftermath that I've barely paid any attention at all to the Eurovision rehearsals this year. Anyway, I thought it was high time I got my priorities straight, so I've put myself through a bit of a crash-course over the last hour or two. In no particular order, these are the ten countries I think might qualify from the first semi-final...

Greece
Switzerland
Norway
Albania
Turkey
Serbia
Finland
Azerbaijan
Russia
Iceland

I'm more than a touch surprised to find myself including Albania in that list, and with a fair bit of confidence at that - I didn't hold out much hope for them after I first heard the song back in December, but the traditional Cinderella effect has kicked in yet again. Compared to other predictions I've seen, the song I seem to be going out on a limb with is Switzerland - but I'm guessing its simplicity and charm might just see it through. Strictly on merit, Hungary really should be on the list and Russia shouldn't, but I've learnt from long experience that you don't get anywhere from a) betting on dance tracks at Eurovision, or b) betting against Russia at Eurovision. Hungary seem to have had problems in the rehearsals in any case.

This is the semi that UK viewers are allowed to vote in. I of course have my long-standing personal rule of only voting for songs performed entirely in a language other than English, but depressingly that doesn't leave me with many options on this occasion. Although Portugal are sticking with their usual practice of singing in their native tongue, I'm afraid I won't be able to vote for them for a fourth successive year - the song is unspeakably dreadful. So that only leaves Poland and Serbia. I'll need to have a think...

Will Eurovision 2011 be a Broad Church?

I've just been catching up on the rumour-mill surrounding this year's UK entry for Eurovision, with suggestions that Charlotte Church, Katherine Jenkins, Pixie Lott or even (weirdly) Madonna will be our representative.  We can probably safely discount the latter possibility, but I must say I'm mildly encouraged by all this, because it presumably means the BBC are planning a return to the moderately successful 1992-4 arrangement of an internal selection of the performer, but a public vote to decide the song.  As I've mentioned before, I'd much rather see a completely open selection, but the worst of all worlds is what happened last year, with everything resting on the judgement of a single songwriter who clearly didn't have a clue where the contest was 'at'.  All we need to ensure now is that John Barrowman and his oh-so-helpful attempts to 'guide' the public's choice are kept well clear of the selection show!

As for the three songs to be selected so far, if the contest were to stop right now probably the Swiss entry - In Love For A While by Anna Rossinelli - would be the winner.  That's not saying a great deal.  The Romanian song is pleasant, uptempo, and utterly unmemorable, while the Albanian entry is a complete dog's breakfast - although admittedly that always seems to be the case at this stage in proceedings, so it would be rash to write it off altogether.  Whatever radical surgery they perform, though, I can't believe it's going to be a patch on Juliana Pasha last year.  Hopefully something more inspiring will be along soon from other countries.

A Cinderella Eurovision

What is it about Albania and the Eurovision? Every December they unveil their entry for the following year's contest far earlier than other countries, and with few exceptions it usually sounds pretty ropey. But at some point between then and May, magic dust is sprinkled, the fairy godmother waves her wand, and it transpires that the Cinderella of the Balkans shall be going to the ball after all. You hear their entry again, and it's hard to believe it's the exact same song as the disaster area you first encountered before Christmas.

But Albania wasn't alone in exhibiting a Cinderella effect in last night's first semi-final - which is just as well, as on the basis of the national selections this had been shaping up to be one of the lowest-quality contests in a good few years. If Thursday's semi follows a similar pattern, it looks like it might just be all right on the night come Saturday. In particular, Norway are doing themselves proud as hosts - pulling off the ingenious masterstroke of using presenters who look like they might actually have hosted television programmes once or twice before.

As for the results, I'm pleased that my prediction for the ten qualifiers was almost spot-on - the one blemish was that I had Finland pencilled in instead of Moldova. I'm particularly delighted to have been right about Portugal, as I feared my heart might have been ruling my head on that one. My biggest disappointments were seeing Slovakia and Malta fail to progress - I hadn't rated Malta previously, but it was a strong performance on the night. It's slightly galling to see Russia (as usual) go through in the place of those superior entries, but I'm not remotely surprised - 50% jury voting was never going to make more than a small dent in the traditional political voting from Estonia, Latvia, Moldova and Belarus.

Performance of the night - Iceland, by a country mile. I'm beginning to toy with the possibility they might just have a chance of winning - but then I have a feeling I probably did the same with the song's alter ego two years ago (ultimately it finished well down the leaderboard in the final).

Get rid of the old, take a hold and be free

My first reflection on tonight's Eurovision semi is that I think we're heading back to Athens next year. The staging of the Greek entry was quite breathtaking - it hardly seems to matter that it's an average sort of song, averagely sung. What does matter of course is that Sakis Rouvas is a major star across many parts of Europe, and all things considered I think he may just have the beating of Norway. On the other hand, I have to admit that I haven't entirely understood the widespread appeal of Norway from the moment I first heard it a couple of months ago! My other confession is that I actually voted against This is Our Night in the Greek national final (the first opportunity I'd ever had to vote in a non-UK selection) which may end up looking like a slightly silly decision in forty-eight hours' time. But then I voted for Yodel In The Canyon Of Love in 1997 as well...

As for my prediction, in spite of the momentary loss of nerve I mentioned on Twitter, I did fare slightly better this time and got nine out of ten right. My only blemish was that I thought Serbia would go through and Albania wouldn't. (Memo to Serbia - revert to one of those powerful ethnic ballads next year!) Funnily enough, when I was drawing up the list I pondered putting Albania in at the last minute - but if I had done it would have been Denmark I'd have left out. As ever, it'll be interesting to see which song was the jury pick.

I'm sure I'd already know the answer to this if I'd been following it closely enough over the last few months - but why were Greece and Cyprus paired together in the same semi-final? If the main purpose of the new (as in new last year) rules is to split up the various Eurovision old pals' act, none dates back further than the Greeks and the Cypriots.

Oh, and Estonia were indeed excellent. It'll be a close call between them and Portugal when I'm deciding how to vote on Saturday.

Eurovision déjà vu

I don't want to puncture anyone's enthusiasm for the UK's selection process for Eurovision this year, but long-term followers of the contest will surely back me up on one point - haven't some of the phrases we've heard from Graham Norton, Andrew Lloyd-Webber and the contestants sounded startlingly familiar? Like "with people of this calibre on board, it's just got more credibility this time". I think I remember Gina G using a variant of that line in 1996! In rather the same way, just about every actress to play a Bond girl in the last twenty-five years has at some point uttered the words - "ah, but she's not your normal sort of Bond girl, she's a real match for him".

Another one is "let everyone know we're taking it seriously this year". Michael Ball in 1992, anyone? In fact, we've heard that line every single time (and it's happened quite a few times) the selection process has been given some sort of makeover. Most recent was the introduction of the Making Your Mind Up format in 2004, leading to the bold selection of (ahem) James Fox. Which brings me on to to another moment from the most recent show on Saturday that really made me wince. It was Norton and Lloyd-Webber groaning their way through Albania's entry and then declaring that if Lloyd-Webber couldn't beat such rubbish, he might as well retire. But unfortunately I seem to remember an 'expert panel' saying much the same thing in the wake of James Fox's selection - they reviewed a handful of other countries' entries and smugly asserted they could already say we'd beaten those. Imprudent words as it turned out, and Lloyd-Webber may similarly live to regret being quite so quick to write off Albania. Of all the Eurovision countries, they seem to have had a particular knack in recent years for getting the best out of what initially sounds like quite a ropey song.

Solutions to the Eurovision political voting problem

I went out of my way to defend Terry Wogan on the All Kinds of Everything blog yesterday (I know, I've got an unhealthy fixation with that place), so it was a bit disappointing to hear him make such fatalistic remarks about the future of the Eurovision Song Contest in his commentary tonight. If he's ready to call it a day, that's his prerogative, but the idea that the entirety of western Europe is going to join him in doing so is a bit melodramatic. I wouldn't deny for a moment there's a serious problem with political voting, but the irony is that this is the year a significant first step was made towards addressing that issue. The new rules that applied at the semi-final stage successfully produced a fair balance between western and eastern qualifiers for the first time in years, so now all that's needed is a similar innovation to sort out the problem in the final. Off the top of my head, I can think of four possibilities that would provide at least a partial solution.

1) Allow each country to award points to fifteen different entries, instead of the current ten. This wouldn't have been feasible in the past, but now that only the top marks are read out, it would no longer slow proceedings down at all. Of course, under this system the top points would still be awarded on a neighbourly basis, but it's reasonable to assume the lower set of points would be distributed more on merit, leading to a fairer overall outcome. An example to illustrate - if a country happened to finish twelfth out of twenty-five in every single televote, under the current system it would finish last with no points at all. That simply can't be considered a fair reflection of the result people are actually voting for.

2) Allow each country to award points to five eastern countries, and five western countries. This would have the advantage of still allowing viewers to decide the result, and still to vote for whichever country they like - indeed it would be a strong incentive to cast two votes - but it would also, at a stroke, neutralise the in-built advantage eastern countries currently enjoy.

3) The BBC could surrender its 'Big Four' status in exchange for something more worthwhile - separate representation in the contest for Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland. It would be the right thing to do on its own merits, but it would also produce a new British Isles voting bloc that could balance out its counterparts in the Balkans, the Baltic, Scandinavia, and the ex-Soviet Union. And if anyone tells you Scotland would never award high marks to England, I can tell you for certain they're wrong. Apart from anything else, about 8% of the population is English-born.

4) Revert to a 50/50 weighting for the jury and televote. Probably the simplest solution, in that it's been done before, at least in some countries.

On the contest itself, I was a bit disappointed to see Russia run away with it - as I said before Serbia, Portugal and Albania were my favourites, but I would still have been much happier to see Greece, Ukraine or Armenia take the crown than Russia. Ah well, it's all a matter of personal taste at the end of the day. At least I had the satisfaction of seeing my prediction turn out to be close to the money, although it wasn't exactly a tough one to call this year! And at least the song that was 'clearly the worst in the whole contest' (© Keith Mills 2008) somehow managed to finish 5th out of 43 entries. Wonder how it managed that?

Por-tu-gal!

Do you know, I actually found myself punching the air when Portugal were named as the final qualifier. I had to remind myself I've never even been to Portugal, but it was my second-favourite song of the night, and I would have been heartbroken if it hadn't made it through. When there was only one spot in the final remaining, I honestly believed it was going to Malta.

And as for my favourite Albania - well I'm obviously rubbish at predictions, but on the plus side there is some justice in this world after all! My dream result for Saturday would now be a Serbian victory, with Portugal and Albania also in the top ten. And a top fifteen finish for Andy Abraham and the UK, if only for the pleasure of watching the sainted Keith Mills being forced to eat his words - again.

Prediction for second Eurovision semi-final (Thursday)

I probably should quit while I'm ahead on the prediction front, but here goes nothing (as my Mum would say). In no particular order, here are the ten countries I think will qualify for the final tomorrow night -

Malta
Ukraine
Bulgaria
Sweden
Hungary
Portugal
Belarus
Iceland
Macedonia (or FYROM if you're Greek)
Turkey

The first thing that may leap out at you is that I've omitted one of the frontrunners for the Eurovision crown this year, in the shape of Switzerland. It's strange to find myself doing that, because I think it's a fantastic song, but it seems to have been completely drained of its dynamism in the two rehearsals I've seen. I'm still a little unsure about its prospects, however, because I haven't seen today's dress rehearsal, and frustratingly the reports of how Paolo got on are somewhat contradictory. Belarus probably wouldn't feature in my list on the merit of the song alone, but it's there because a) the choreography and visual impact of the performance is superb, and b) even with the new rules Belarus will still have one or two natural allies to boost its points tally.

The other point of uncertainty is what you might call the Kate Ryan factor - how many times have we seen a western European country with a superb song, well performed, yet inexplicably failing to qualify? It's not too difficult to imagine that scenario playing out again for, say, Iceland or Malta - especially since the Maltese entry is penned by the same Borg/Vella combination that came a cropper with Olivia Lewis last year. However, my instinct is that both countries will sneak through - perhaps assisted by the new jury vote.

And who will I be voting for? Call me peculiar, but it's definitely Albania for me. As I mentioned the other night, I only vote for songs performed exclusively in a language other than English, but even if I didn't follow that rule I'd do the same thing anyway. It's incredible to think it was way back at Christmas that I first had the chance to fall in love with Olta Boka's beautiful song. I've tried not to let my personal regard for it cloud my judgement in terms of its prospects tomorrow, but if there's any justice at all in this world...