Ultra-early prediction for Eurovision 2011

As long-term readers will know, since this blog started in 2008 I've made an annual eve-of-Eurovision prediction for the top 3-5 placings in the contest. I thought for the purposes of comparison (and also just in case I've lost interest in blogging by May!), I'd attempt an additional, much earlier prediction this year, unaffected by reports from the rehearsals which are always such a huge factor in trying to fathom out what is really going to happen.

I think the puzzle this time can be summed up fairly succinctly - will France walk it, or not? It's the best song in the contest by miles, it's hugely distinctive - but it's just possible that it might be distinctive in the wrong way, ie. in the sense of not having enough of an appeal to younger televoters. We could see a repeat of the Natasha St-Pier/Sandrine François scenario, when France also had the best song and the best singer, but never really threatened to win. It's hard to say whether that will happen, but if France does fall short the winner then becomes extremely tough to predict, because bubbling under are five songs that are fairly evenly-matched - Sweden, the UK, Germany, Estonia and Hungary.

My instinct is that Sweden can't win - they've been banging away with these formulaic show-stopping efforts for as long as anyone can remember, and in recent years haven't come within touching distance of victory. The shadow hanging over Hungary is the strikingly poor record of out-and-out dance tracks in the contest over the years - one of my all-time favourite Eurovision entries Je t'adore failed to even qualify for the final in 2006. Germany are presenting a class act in every sense, and although I've always felt the song was a touch too low-key to win, Lena Meyer-Landrut's fame and popularity across the continent may offset that problem. And the UK? Although my first impression was positive, the more I've listened to the song the more I've come to feel that it's a bit 'forced' and soulless - although, again, Blue's fan following may partly come to the rescue.

So, by a mixture of process of elimination and a gut feeling at this stage that France won't win, here is what I've come up with -

Winners - Estonia (Rockefeller Street - Getter Jaani)
2nd - France (Sognu - Amaury Vassili)
3rd - Germany (Taken By a Stranger - Lena Meyer-Landrut)
4th - Sweden (Popular - Eric Saade)
5th - UK (I Can - Blue)

So I'll see if I'm still saying that in a few weeks' time after the rehearsals! Although France is my personal favourite, it would be nice to see Estonia back on top - their fine run of results in the late 90s/early 2000s (crowned by unexpected victory in 2001) was one of the great fairy-tales of the contest's history, and it's been a shame to see them regress since then.

Eurovision reflections

I think at this time last year I managed a decent-length post on this topic, but I'm in one of those frames of mind where I think I'd struggle to string together a decent sentence, let alone seven proper paragraphs. Perhaps a numbered list of the main points will do to be getting on with!

1) Still don't quite get Norway, but it was obvious even to me it was going to win. The 'most points ever' thing I do find slightly odd.

2) I'm surprised and thrilled that Iceland finished second - when I predicted fourth place for them last night I actually worried that might be a touch on the high side. It genuinely is one of my all-time favourite Eurovision songs, so I'm glad Europe went for it (unlike some of my other favourites down the years!).

3) On second thoughts, maybe I wasn't so foolish in voting for Out of Control in the Greek national final!

4) The notion that Graham Norton and Andrew Lloyd-Webber were putting about that 'this is a music contest again'...well, any UK Eurovision fan will always be grateful for some positive spin at last, but it might be a touch premature in this case. The result tonight was actually remarkably similar to 2006 - a worthy runaway winner from western Europe masking the huge amount of political voting that was still going on. Romania and Moldova swapped votes, Andorra voted for Spain, Cyprus voted for Greece, Finland voted for Estonia (their neighbours and linguistic cousins), and it was pretty close to business as usual in the Balkans. I'm sure there were plenty of other examples I can't think of off the top of my head.

5) I wanted Paddy O'Connell to succeed Terry Wogan - but I was wrong. Graham Norton was excellent tonight, with exactly the right blend of cynicism, absurdity and positivity where it was warranted. It was only on the latter element that Terry Wogan has been found wanting in recent years.

6) The one area in which Norton was inferior to Wogan was in his failure to anticipate the most predictable political voting. Wogan would have predicted the destination of Andorra and Cyprus' douze points several seconds in advance - whereas Norton was seriously wondering if Andorra might be Patricia Kaas fans!

7) Norton also tried to maintain the tension for the last half-hour of voting on the question of whether the UK would stay in the top five, even though that was never in doubt. What was very close was the race for fourth place between Turkey and the UK, but he seemed totally oblivious to that!

8) As a UK supporter, I thought we had a genuine chance for all of about twenty seconds. When the first set of votes gave us ten points and Norway twelve it looked possible - but as soon as we got zero from the second set of votes I knew it was going to be a patchy night.

9) Why, oh why, oh why didn't I take Keith Mills seriously to task this year rather than last year over his anti-UK agenda? His initial prediction for It's My Time yesterday was 16th-20th, which he very generously hardened up to 16th in his final call. And what do you know? He's brazenly glossing over the fact that he got it so spectacularly wrong. Now there's a surprise.

10) Talking of Mr Mills, he does have this tendency to utterly convince himself that something very improbable is true and then flog the point to death in spite of a mass of contradictory evidence. A good example this year was his assumption that Lloyd-Webber was on the stage solely to impress the juries - from which he concluded it was likely to 'backfire' because the voting public would dislike it. But where is the slightest evidence that was ever the UK's thinking? For my money Lloyd-Webber was on stage to impress both the juries and the public with his celebrity - whether it worked or not I don't know, but I've little doubt that was always the idea.

11) Alsou was a good choice as host (pity she didn't get a chance to sing in place of the unfunny interludes), and I actually quite liked the intervention from space. Wasn't that done when the contest was in Latvia as well?

12) I actually made two slightly different predictions last night (one on Politicalbetting.com and one here), and I should have stuck with the first one because it was more accurate! I got last-minute cold feet about the UK's potential for a top five placing.

13) I'm surprised how poorly both Portugal and Malta did.

14) In the end I simply couldn't decide - so I voted for both Portugal and Estonia! At least Estonia received the decent placing they richly deserved.

So here's to Oslo 2010. As I hinted above, I hope the EBU look at tweaking the voting system a little further. For one thing, what's the point of having ordinary members of the public (ie. potential political voters) on the national juries when the public can vote by televote anyway?

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.

My prediction for second Eurovision semi-final (Thursday)

OK, having been unexpectedly side-tracked last night by the random appearance of a 10,000 word dissertation about something I wrote here a month ago (well I'm sure it happens to everyone at some point), back to serious matters. I didn't have much luck with my prediction on Tuesday (only seven out of ten correct), but that may have been partly because I had very strong feelings one way or the other about some of the songs involved. I'm feeling a little more 'detached' about tonight's semi, so let's see if I fare any better. The ten countries I think will qualify for the final tonight, in no particular order, are -

Ukraine
Azerbaijan
Denmark
Norway
Greece
Lithuania
Croatia
Serbia
Moldova
Estonia

Of course, living in the UK, I don't have a vote tonight but if I did I have a feeling I'd be plumping for Estonia. It fits my criteria of being entirely sung in a language other than English, but in actual fact I think it's the strongest song in the semi anyway. I'll be interested to see the live performance, though - it might help me decide whether I'll be voting for it on Saturday or sticking with the delightful Portuguese entry.

And can they please dispense with the magic button tonight..?

It's my time...

Or rather it really is the time for this particular blog, which tries rather unnaturally to be simultaneously about both the Eurovision Song Contest and Scottish politics from a nationalist perspective. So what could be better - or more improbable - than a UK Eurovision selection final featuring a cameo by none other than the SNP's Pete Wishart MP? OK, there probably are quite a few things that would be better, but at least it allows me to marry both subjects in the same post for once!

So Jade goes to Moscow! The outcome I desperately wanted, but certainly wasn't predicting. But the revelation of the night for me was how beautifully the twins performed It's My Time, and for the first time I started to understand Lloyd-Webber's point about how special it can be when two close siblings sing in harmony. It was a subtler performance than the other two acts, and in a perverse way there's a little bit of me that's disappointed they won't get the chance to repeat that performance on the Eurovision stage. But in any case they thoroughly deserved their second place on the night.

The other delight about the outcome is that we can now look forward to four solid months of Keith Mills smugly telling us the UK have no chance because our singer "oozes far more confidence that her limited vocal range would support". Charmin'. Perhaps we should swap her for the "almost perfect" Chris Doran? (OK, that's maybe a bit too catty even for me!)

Final thought - ever since I heard the title of the song (which is growing on me nicely, by the way) I've been wondering what the 'it's my time' lyric reminded me of from a Eurovision point of view. It suddenly struck me a couple of hours ago - it's this song...

That, for the uninitiated, is Evelin Samuel's Diamond of Night, the 1999 Estonian entry. Very different type of song of course (it's practically a lullaby), but it's one of my all-time favourites, and I think at this stage we'd probably settle for a repeat of its sixth-placed finish! It also had the distinction, as Terry Wogan pointed out in his commentary, of being the last Eurovision song of the twentieth century, since it was the last in the running order that year. That is, except for those people who think the twentieth century ended on 31 December, 2000!