Rather a good year. With a bit of distance, the production shines.
01 Bulgaria
B: The image of a “ludo mlado, konche yazdi” is both sexy and pathetic. To be honest, I hadn’t realised this song actually had proper words: it never struck me that it should have.
A: Pretty much the entire first minute of the song is about creating atmosphere and watching it build. It’s funny, listening to it now, how much the drums are in the background in places, when they’re the central element of the performance. Great piece of music, in any case.
V: What a sparkly little chainmail pixie Elitsa is. Off-key for much of the semi-final performance, but it doesn’t really matter even if you do notice it, and she’s very much on song in the final anyway. The bit where they throw away the drum sticks is great, and the stage looks fantastic from the off. I love the little pony-leg-kick motion Elitsa does.
02 Israel
B: I mustn’t have bothered checking out the lyrics to any of these non-English songs at the time – if I had I might have had more time for this number, whose lyrics are clever and complex by turns. They fly in the face of the no-politics-in-Eurovision policy, obviously, but are all the better for it because they actually mean something. There’s great rhythm to some of the English lyrics that really personifies them, like “With demonic, technologic willingness to harm” and “Don’t wanna go kaput kaboom”, but the real highlights are in the Hebrew lyrics: lines like “Hine milkhama, hine hanshama”, “Klum, klum, ze ma shekulam osim” and “Vekulam shotim lekhayim vetov’im ze letzad ze”. At long last an Israeli anthem with a pertinent message, not just some soporific blancmange.
A: Loads of personality, with a composition that is surprisingly deft in places. There can be no argument that the best bit is the ‘nevertheless’ moment. However, because it eats up words at a rate of knots and shifts in style so frequently, it seems to go on for much longer than three minutes.
V: They were right: the direction really is all over the place. But I fail to see how staging or shooting it any differently would have brought a different result: there’s more drag here than in Drama Queen.
03 Cyprus
B: Do you think Poseidon the lyricist deliberately chose French words that would fool me into thinking they were Greek? I maintain they could scan as either. I think it’s lines like “Routine et paresse nous menacent” that confuse me. In any case, the situation they describe resonates.
A: This feels like it should come across a lot more convincingly than it does. The electronic/synth production sounds dated, and the faux-techno middle eight is at least 15 years too late.
V: Scary and unattractive. The schizophrenic kaleidoscope effect is perfect.
04 Belarus
B: These lyrics work well enough when they’re sung, but lines like “You can serve me something really hot” just look daft on the page.
A: Whether or not it intends to, this tells you immediately that it’s trying to be a James Bond theme, or at least mimic the scale of one. It impresses me, but only conditionally, since parts of it still sound sluggish and lazy to my ears. I wonder how many more CIS countries Philip Kirkorov will magic rabbits out of hats for at the eleventh hour.
V: Another unattractive set of vocals here, but the stage show is sufficiently distracting for it not to matter all that much. The stage show is, in fact, one of the best we’ve ever seen.
05 Iceland
B: There are touches of greatness to these lyrics – in the opening line, for example, and in the image of a ‘love let loose and painted black’ – but the overall impression is that Peter Fenner was making it all up as he went along, thinking: “Oh, that sounds good, that’ll do.”
A: This has ‘Made in Iceland’ stamped all over it, which is probably why I love it: so much of their music seems to capture a sense of the physicality of the country itself. And I’ll always respect a song which brings together elements of pop and rock this successfully, especially when backed by such a fantastic orchestral arrangement.
V: I’d forgotten what a boisterous opening run this semi had. The stage looks amazing once again. Great performance from Eiríkur, but someone ought to have reminded the drummer not to get ideas above his station.
06 Georgia
B: Full marks for the sense of surrealist grandeur they do their best to achieve.
A: An entire landscape of music echoes between your ears with this song. I doubt we’ll see another debut as adventurous and impressive as this again. It’s expressive, it’s vibrant and it’s so bold.
V: A laudable effort is made here to capture the ambience of the lyrics and music. I still find the whole thing captivating.
07 Montenegro
B: Is he pining for a battered wife? What does “Poljubiću tvoje crno oko” mean? Does she have a black eye? The blahness of the lyrics makes it easy to believe the song’s from the same lyricist as Ciao amore...
A: ...but it’s hard to believe it’s from the same composer as Zauvijek moja. (Then again, the second and last entry from the unhappily wed Serbia and Montenegro was clearly the exception to the rule for both him and the guy who wrote the lyrics.) Following the Georgian entry, it proves the whole ying-yang thing: a lot more competent than anyone gives it credit for, it nevertheless lacks any sense of inventiveness or ambition.
V: Note-perfect performance from
08 Switzerland
B: If I was DJ Bobo’s forever I’d probably feel it was “Like a nightmare, never ending” as well. The rest of the lyrics drag the points tally well into the minuses, but the unexpected use of ‘hence’ brings them back to an even zero.
A: Does what it says on the tin (i.e. not much).
V: For a song that feels like it was composed with every frame of its mini-feature-film video clip worked out in advance, they fuck up royally on the visuals. The sound mix is surprisingly uneven, too, leaving the weak vocals very exposed. Yay!
09 Moldova
B: I bet these lyrics would make perfect sense if you translated them directly into Romanian.
A: We’re well past the 30-second mark and still nothing’s happened, so it’s nice that countries other than Turkey can give us ridiculously long introductions. They make up for it in the remaining two and a half minutes, although it does lead to that rushed ending, which has always bothered me. The piano (keyboards?) in the second verse is great, and the strings are tremendous throughout. But then they always are.
V: The whole thing is a wardrobe disaster of the highest magnitude. Natalia’s vocals are amazing though, once she gets the better of her nerves, and she provides a strong note – literally – to finish on in the final. Great, bold colour scheme.
10 The Netherlands
B: “Are we making the same mistake?” Yes. “Have we learned from the past?” No.
A: Dutch pop not exactly at its best, but it doesn’t do much wrong either. It just doesn’t have the wow factor it needs to elevate it above the merely adequate, however rich Edsilia’s vocals are.
V: Like Glennis Grace, Edsilia here puts in a flawless vocal performance, but it doesn’t really feel like she’s in the moment. Such a pity.
11 Albania
B: “But the journey’s long, the going’s slow / ... / A million miles later / I crave a love that’s greater / Take me home again” – affecting lyrics that meant so much more when Frederik Ndoci spoke about what he and his country have been through in his lifetime.
A: Beautiful, layered production. There’s something truly heart-rending about both the music and the vocals.
V: Lovely. Mrs Ndoci bears a striking resemblance to 1960s Doctor Who companion and history teacher Barbara Wright. And those backing vocalists – the two right behind Frederik in the close-ups – were my ultimate three-in-a-bed fantasy in Helsinki.
12 Denmark
B: If they were going for lyrics here that couldn’t be sung by anyone other than a drag queen, they got them exactly right.
A: Ditto re: the music. It’s dripping in sequins.
V: Do the robot! The idea was clearly for the backing vocalists and dancers not to upstage DQ, but they look like they’ve been (ahem) dragged on stage while having a couple of drinks after work. Remarkably steady vocals given how wonky they were all week.
13 Croatia
B: I like these lyrics rather a lot. “Ti si k’o na ranu sol” would make a fabulous, cutting putdown in the right situation.
V: The whole thing is a wardrobe disaster of the highest magnitude. Natalia’s vocals are amazing though, once she gets the better of her nerves, and she provides a strong note – literally – to finish on in the final. Great, bold colour scheme.
10 The Netherlands
B: “Are we making the same mistake?” Yes. “Have we learned from the past?” No.
A: Dutch pop not exactly at its best, but it doesn’t do much wrong either. It just doesn’t have the wow factor it needs to elevate it above the merely adequate, however rich Edsilia’s vocals are.
V: Like Glennis Grace, Edsilia here puts in a flawless vocal performance, but it doesn’t really feel like she’s in the moment. Such a pity.
11 Albania
B: “But the journey’s long, the going’s slow / ... / A million miles later / I crave a love that’s greater / Take me home again” – affecting lyrics that meant so much more when Frederik Ndoci spoke about what he and his country have been through in his lifetime.
A: Beautiful, layered production. There’s something truly heart-rending about both the music and the vocals.
V: Lovely. Mrs Ndoci bears a striking resemblance to 1960s Doctor Who companion and history teacher Barbara Wright. And those backing vocalists – the two right behind Frederik in the close-ups – were my ultimate three-in-a-bed fantasy in Helsinki.
12 Denmark
B: If they were going for lyrics here that couldn’t be sung by anyone other than a drag queen, they got them exactly right.
A: Ditto re: the music. It’s dripping in sequins.
V: Do the robot! The idea was clearly for the backing vocalists and dancers not to upstage DQ, but they look like they’ve been (ahem) dragged on stage while having a couple of drinks after work. Remarkably steady vocals given how wonky they were all week.
13 Croatia
B: I like these lyrics rather a lot. “Ti si k’o na ranu sol” would make a fabulous, cutting putdown in the right situation.
A: This just works for me, and it still seems quintessentially Croatian. It’s better than a handful of entries from the country that have made it to the final, so it’s a shame it was the first one not to get through. Great structure, coming full circle the way it does. The acoustic version on the promo CD is fantastic.
V: There are several amazing things about Carrie Bradshaw clone Ms Gluhak: the length of her legs; the fuffiness of her hair; and the fact that never once live does she manage to sing quite in the right key.
14 Poland
B: I can’t find anything to say about this at all.
A: I’ve never understood the transformation this undergoes in the chorus: the verses actually have a drive and energy about them that suit a song called Time to Party, and then it goes all salad days on us. Mind you, theirs is not a party I’d probably ever receive – and certainly never accept – an invitation to. Not my scene.
V: This is almost as tiresome as Push the Button. The fizzing cage is superfluous, although it and the chains underscore the tone effectively, which is both completely wrong and completely right at the same time. And I don’t mean this unkindly, but Sasha looks remarkably like a chihuahua. Maybe it’s the diamante collar.
V: There are several amazing things about Carrie Bradshaw clone Ms Gluhak: the length of her legs; the fuffiness of her hair; and the fact that never once live does she manage to sing quite in the right key.
14 Poland
B: I can’t find anything to say about this at all.
A: I’ve never understood the transformation this undergoes in the chorus: the verses actually have a drive and energy about them that suit a song called Time to Party, and then it goes all salad days on us. Mind you, theirs is not a party I’d probably ever receive – and certainly never accept – an invitation to. Not my scene.
V: This is almost as tiresome as Push the Button. The fizzing cage is superfluous, although it and the chains underscore the tone effectively, which is both completely wrong and completely right at the same time. And I don’t mean this unkindly, but Sasha looks remarkably like a chihuahua. Maybe it’s the diamante collar.
15 Serbia
B: Lovely rhythm to the lyrics. I love the fact that žar means ‘ardour’. You occasionally come across words in these languages and think: that’s perfect.
A: Piano and strings with an acoustic track? Works for me. But I still find the song as a whole a bit overblown and self-important.
V: The vocals are glorious; the performance is bemusing, even sinister. It’s so red it feels like someone should be developing photos. I wonder whether it would have done as well with some leggy babe singing it, or whether Marija’s charmingly geeky pug dog look was part of the appeal.
16 Czech Republic
B: Social conscience from the Czechs on their debut. You’ve got to love it for the diacritics it brings to the contest alone.
A: In hindsight, being drawn straight after Serbia was the death knell of this song. Something so uncompromising and unadulterated was never likely to set the scoreboard alight, but you can just see the middle-aged women sitting there tutting at these burly men shouting and making a racket after the nice lesbian and her lady mayoress friends.
V: They don’t make much allowance for the fact that they’re not on some festival stage, do they? I love the fact that the guy jumping up and down waving the flag at the end is as queer as the rest of the folk in the OGAE crowd.
17 Portugal
B: I suppose if you were caught up in the moment you might think that second verse wasn’t total bollocks. “Dança esta canção porque tem tudo de ti” doesn’t convince me, I’m afraid.
A: To this day I fail to see the appeal that took this to within a hair’s breadth of making the final. It’s sunny and completely unpretentious, but there’s nothing interesting about it whatsoever.
V: They were very clever to fiddle with (and soften) the vocals here. You wouldn’t believe from this performance that Sabrina is as good a singer as she showed herself to be in the press conferences. It’s competent, but very kitsch.
18 FYR Macedonia
B: “Mojot svet se osum noti / Edna duša balkanska” does make a great line, especially given the rhythm of it and the music it’s set to. The verses here have a sense of poetry about them, but the la-la-ness of the chorus is only disguised by the Macedonian, and once we hit the English part the illusion is shattered completely.
A: So many of the elements introduced in the opening bars of the song seem to be working against each other, and yet come together seamlessly. Classy production. I appreciate that it wears its Macedonianness on its sleeve.
V: Legs ahoy! Do the FYRoM delegation like their glances to camera in the opening pan or what. (And their stools.) Why they eschewed the lovely turquoise colour scheme the production team originally offered them I don’t know: what they went with seems unnecessarily and inappropriately dark to me. [Addendum: Are all of the men in Macedonia either boyish like the lad doing the dancing here or crusty like Vlado Janevski? Is there nothing in between?]
19 Norway
B: The only clever thing about these lyrics is the way the lines “Let’s feel the beat, feel the heat, you and me” and “Just move your feet to the beat and dance with me” work so well set to the music with all that happy clapping going on.
A: Paint-by-numbers Nordic trash. Guri sings it like she’s in an elocution lesson.
V: Great lead vocals, and the three apparently now mandatory blonde backing vocalists are as solid as ever. But this has so little energy for such an upbeat song.
20 Malta
B: The metaphors here soon reach saturation point, but they’re pretty clever for the most part. I like the pairing of “You colour me blue, turn my passion to red / It’s feelin’ like I’ve become indigo”. Hard to find any words that even vaguely sound like, rhyme or fit with ‘vertigo’, so they get the thumbs up for that alone.
A: I like the sweeping north African feel of this*, yet another soundtrack song.
V: *Which makes me wonder why they went all oriental with it. It doesn’t smack of the east to me at all. The Maltese would have been right to feel cheated by the director here: he manages to miss large swathes of the choreography. They would also have been right to feel short-changed by Ms Lewis, who holds herself back to such an extent that she mucks up all of the big notes in the chorus. [Googles] Who knew that the beefcake on the violin is actually a famous, er, violinist? Apparently he’s a doctor, too. The things you learn when you do a bit of research.
21 Andorra
B: Catalan looks quite odd at times, when you’re presented with lines like “Podem unir-nos, fer-ho bé”. This has some fairly stark truths for what is essentially a naïve schoolboy essay.
A: Offsetting the potentially eye-rolling message of the lyrics with some West Coast grunge was always going to make it more palatable. The pace is relentless.
V: How bizarre that Andorra of all countries gets the most audible support from the audience in the semi-final! This looks and sounds great, even if the adorable N!ki is flat as a tack most of the time. This is the only also-ran I would dearly love to have seen in the final just because.
22 Hungary
B: The last two lines are the best of the whole song. As an aside, it’s interesting to note that Imre, the given name of the lyricist here, is also a common man’s name in Estonia, pointing to the ancient Finno-Ugric links between the languages. (Having said that, Ines is as popular a woman’s name in Portugal as it is in Estonia, so maybe it’s all hit and miss.)
A: Sublime.
V: Best stage and lighting of the entire contest. Great staging, too. Someone from the Hungarian delegation was clearly listening in the press centre after the semi when I said that Magda needed to sit on the suitcase :) Unexpectedly, She’s a lot shakier in the final.
V: How bizarre that Andorra of all countries gets the most audible support from the audience in the semi-final! This looks and sounds great, even if the adorable N!ki is flat as a tack most of the time. This is the only also-ran I would dearly love to have seen in the final just because.
22 Hungary
B: The last two lines are the best of the whole song. As an aside, it’s interesting to note that Imre, the given name of the lyricist here, is also a common man’s name in Estonia, pointing to the ancient Finno-Ugric links between the languages. (Having said that, Ines is as popular a woman’s name in Portugal as it is in Estonia, so maybe it’s all hit and miss.)
A: Sublime.
V: Best stage and lighting of the entire contest. Great staging, too. Someone from the Hungarian delegation was clearly listening in the press centre after the semi when I said that Magda needed to sit on the suitcase :) Unexpectedly, She’s a lot shakier in the final.
23 Estonia
B: There’s a certain passion and fire to these lyrics, which suggests they got something right, and I like the inevitability of it all.
A: Good synths. The promise of the opening is never kept though, merely reiterated, rendering 90% of the song disappointing. Add to this the fact that Gerli Padar really doesn’t have an attractive voice and the result is a foregone conclusion.
V: The lighting here isn’t just great – it’s spectacular! Yellow and white make for a very welcome change. The screengrab of Gerli on Diggiloo makes it look like she’s plummeting to her death from the top of a tall building, perhaps having given a rooftop concert, still grasping her microphone, professional to the last. Which is fitting, since this performance is as worthy of the term as Estonia had ever been at Eurovision to this point. In fact everyone in those screengrabs looks like they’re either trying not to – or are in the process of – falling off (or indeed pushing someone else off) a tall building.
24 Belgium
B: Suitably uplifting.
A: Fun, funky, engaging. Lots of positive things, really.
V: Apart from the fact that it’s a retro number in a Eurovision era when no one’s going for it, the undoing of this performance is that the vocals are at their weakest where they matter most.
25 Slovenia
B: I like the line “Ljubim nekaj, česar več ni”.
A: It fulfils its remit, but it’s safe to say I’m not a fan of ethnopopera.
V: Diva overload, which is a bit incongruous given she looks like she just fell out of bed and got entangled in her sewing kit. The stage design is striking, like some icy cavern at the end of a dark underground tunnel. Have we worked out in the intervening years what the glowing hand thing was all about?
26 Turkey
B: The sexual charge of these lyrics is undeniable, albeit pretty much shorted out by the bridge, whose combination of ‘lovey-dovey’ and ‘candy’ jars completely.
A: The musical marriage of Turkish elements and contemporary production here is a marked success. Meandering, to a degree, but it sounds good.
V: For the second year in a row, the Turks employ a troupe of foreign dancers and more than get their money’s worth. Kenan is adorable. But are the fireworks at the start mistimed? Shouldn’t they spurt at the same moment the girls drop the cloth, so that our wee guy seems to appear out of nowhere?
27 Austria
B: This is fairly all-encompassing as anthems go, but it has some identifiably gay elements. (Do straight men ‘strut’?) I like the line “If you don’t understand it, don’t take it for granted”.
A: As with various other Austrian entries through the ages, this has all the potential in the world and no one with the degree of talent or interest needed to realise it. I’m glad it has an edge to it, given it was the Life Ball anthem, but it still doesn’t say a lot musically.
V: Dies the death it was always going to come the middle eight.
28 Latvia
B: “Questa notte sarà l’immensità”? Talk about blowing your own trumpet. “Fra le tante stelle, tu mi fai veder la luna” is lovely in a set of lyrics that is otherwise hard to engage with.
A: Italian, by and large, is not a difficult language to pronounce, so I sympathise with the handful of Italians who’ve had to hear this song: now they know how native speakers of English have felt at Eurovision for so many years. Not that this is the most irritating aspect of the song, which is huge and rousing and calculated to an infinite number of decimal places. It makes my skin crawl.
V: Roberto Meloni is a twat. Zigfrīds Muktupāvels (great name!) looks like a Victorian serial killer. Thankfully, he’s offset by the boyish charms of Andris Ērglis.
29 Bosnia and Herzegovina
B: “Neka ide bol na moju dušu što za tobom umirem”... Tortured in a way that only Bosnia can and indeed does do at Eurovision. It forms a neat counterpart to their 2006 entry; Marija could well be the embodiment of Lejla herself, answering Hari’s call. I mean, that was always her being snatched away from him, wasn’t it? It wasn’t like she actually wanted to marry the other guy.
A: Beautiful. Lush. Powerful. The list goes on.
V: Given that the aquamarine colour scheme is such a triumph, why oh why did they ever switch to [seemingly the default] red? Pink, at the very least, or even better gold would have made more appropriate choices.
30 Spain
B: I still don’t notice the English lyrics among the Spanish, and for some reason I associate that with Basty more than the other three. Perhaps because he seems so utterly blond. “Kaa giii miii jooo lovv!”
26 Turkey
B: The sexual charge of these lyrics is undeniable, albeit pretty much shorted out by the bridge, whose combination of ‘lovey-dovey’ and ‘candy’ jars completely.
A: The musical marriage of Turkish elements and contemporary production here is a marked success. Meandering, to a degree, but it sounds good.
V: For the second year in a row, the Turks employ a troupe of foreign dancers and more than get their money’s worth. Kenan is adorable. But are the fireworks at the start mistimed? Shouldn’t they spurt at the same moment the girls drop the cloth, so that our wee guy seems to appear out of nowhere?
27 Austria
B: This is fairly all-encompassing as anthems go, but it has some identifiably gay elements. (Do straight men ‘strut’?) I like the line “If you don’t understand it, don’t take it for granted”.
A: As with various other Austrian entries through the ages, this has all the potential in the world and no one with the degree of talent or interest needed to realise it. I’m glad it has an edge to it, given it was the Life Ball anthem, but it still doesn’t say a lot musically.
V: Dies the death it was always going to come the middle eight.
28 Latvia
B: “Questa notte sarà l’immensità”? Talk about blowing your own trumpet. “Fra le tante stelle, tu mi fai veder la luna” is lovely in a set of lyrics that is otherwise hard to engage with.
A: Italian, by and large, is not a difficult language to pronounce, so I sympathise with the handful of Italians who’ve had to hear this song: now they know how native speakers of English have felt at Eurovision for so many years. Not that this is the most irritating aspect of the song, which is huge and rousing and calculated to an infinite number of decimal places. It makes my skin crawl.
V: Roberto Meloni is a twat. Zigfrīds Muktupāvels (great name!) looks like a Victorian serial killer. Thankfully, he’s offset by the boyish charms of Andris Ērglis.
29 Bosnia and Herzegovina
B: “Neka ide bol na moju dušu što za tobom umirem”... Tortured in a way that only Bosnia can and indeed does do at Eurovision. It forms a neat counterpart to their 2006 entry; Marija could well be the embodiment of Lejla herself, answering Hari’s call. I mean, that was always her being snatched away from him, wasn’t it? It wasn’t like she actually wanted to marry the other guy.
A: Beautiful. Lush. Powerful. The list goes on.
V: Given that the aquamarine colour scheme is such a triumph, why oh why did they ever switch to [seemingly the default] red? Pink, at the very least, or even better gold would have made more appropriate choices.
30 Spain
B: I still don’t notice the English lyrics among the Spanish, and for some reason I associate that with Basty more than the other three. Perhaps because he seems so utterly blond. “Kaa giii miii jooo lovv!”
A: Rather insistent in the way it makes its point, this, isn’t it. With a few more bells it could be a little-known discotastic No Name number.
V: Well, it’s pretty obvious where their appeal lies. Plucked to perfection.
31 Ireland
B: Lyrics so cringeworthy they’re headache-inducing, in the verses at least. Or rather verse, since there’s only one. The chorus is quite good.
A: Oh for this to be a blatant rip-off of Nocturne, or at the very least an instrumental: the composition and arrangement are fab.
V: The performance, on the other hand, is awful. It’s like the pub landlord and his wife have decided to have an impromptu knees-up. And egg & chips was never going to work as a desktop theme.
32 Finland
B: Clever touches to these lyrics, which are full of resentment and bitterness. I particularly like the transition from “I wanna wake you” through “I wanna break you” to “I gotta hate you”, and I love the almost casual addition of “you’ll get yours” at the end of the chorus.
A: This is way more accomplished than I ever realised.
V: Dark, brooding and really quite amazing.
33 Lithuania
B: Easily the most mature set of lyrics Lithuania has ever given us. “I’m trying not to think that at break of dawn / You’ll be gone and I’ll be lost” is almost as wonderful as “Melting in your arms, I fail to realise / Why the mornings always change the colour of your eyes”.
A: Acoustic heaven. I love the fact that it eschews a chorus until it’s ready to give us one.
V: The stark, static presentation gets the thumbs up from me. The director must have loved them: he only needed about three cameras and five different shots.
34 Greece
B: “She is the heart of attention / Probably should mention – she’s mine” make a great couple of lines.
A: This, then that, then one of these, then this bit again...
V: It’s all very Fabrizio.
31 Ireland
B: Lyrics so cringeworthy they’re headache-inducing, in the verses at least. Or rather verse, since there’s only one. The chorus is quite good.
A: Oh for this to be a blatant rip-off of Nocturne, or at the very least an instrumental: the composition and arrangement are fab.
V: The performance, on the other hand, is awful. It’s like the pub landlord and his wife have decided to have an impromptu knees-up. And egg & chips was never going to work as a desktop theme.
32 Finland
B: Clever touches to these lyrics, which are full of resentment and bitterness. I particularly like the transition from “I wanna wake you” through “I wanna break you” to “I gotta hate you”, and I love the almost casual addition of “you’ll get yours” at the end of the chorus.
A: This is way more accomplished than I ever realised.
V: Dark, brooding and really quite amazing.
33 Lithuania
B: Easily the most mature set of lyrics Lithuania has ever given us. “I’m trying not to think that at break of dawn / You’ll be gone and I’ll be lost” is almost as wonderful as “Melting in your arms, I fail to realise / Why the mornings always change the colour of your eyes”.
A: Acoustic heaven. I love the fact that it eschews a chorus until it’s ready to give us one.
V: The stark, static presentation gets the thumbs up from me. The director must have loved them: he only needed about three cameras and five different shots.
34 Greece
B: “She is the heart of attention / Probably should mention – she’s mine” make a great couple of lines.
A: This, then that, then one of these, then this bit again...
V: It’s all very Fabrizio.
35 Sweden
B: The lyrics don’t mean anything, but they’re very good. The whole verse starting with “So if you see me somewhere” is brilliant.
A: Same old retro Swedish pop in a new guise, but refreshing for it. It has roughly the same effect as In My Dreams did for its genre, which is to say it’s a production that’s very authentic and together. The ‘roughly’ bit enters the equation when you realise it’s not as entertaining.
V: Glam! Ola Salo is the consummate showman.
Addendum: Krisse’s interlude is one the funniest couple of minutes in Eurovision, period.
Addendum: Krisse’s interlude is one the funniest couple of minutes in Eurovision, period.
36 France
B: Très clever. I especially like “Des fleurs, des fleurs, des fleurs for you” for some reason.
A: There’s every reason for this to split at the seams, but it doesn’t.
V: File under ‘why we love France at Eurovision’. Les Fatals Picards are more likeable than The Ark from the word go.
37 Russia
B: Clunky and blatant: works a treat. The line the EBU draws when it comes to raunchy and/or offensive lyrics is obviously very blurred.
A: If Never Let You Go was a contemporary classic, this is hyper-modern, right down to the music-video interlude. You’ve got to hand it to the Russians: with very few exceptions, they know how to write (or at least pick) damn good pop songs for the contest.
V: If we can’t have the Andorran school boys in the final, at least we get the sluttiest school girls this side of the Urals. The bridge is perfect.
38 Germany
B: Brilliant! I love the lines “Wie sie gehn und stehn / Wie sie dich ansehn / Und shohn öffnen sich Tasche und Herz”.
A: Bugger the women: I want to have Roger Cicero’s babies.
V: Sounds fantastic, but plastering the wall with his name probably wasn’t the best idea in hindsight, and the camerawork is very sluggish.
39 Ukraine
B: “Ruchki, ruchki ye! / Nu, nu, nu Helsinki! / Ukrajina – ce kl’jovo?” Bonkers.
A: As a piece of music, this is clever in ways you probably wouldn’t expect it to be.
B: Très clever. I especially like “Des fleurs, des fleurs, des fleurs for you” for some reason.
A: There’s every reason for this to split at the seams, but it doesn’t.
V: File under ‘why we love France at Eurovision’. Les Fatals Picards are more likeable than The Ark from the word go.
37 Russia
B: Clunky and blatant: works a treat. The line the EBU draws when it comes to raunchy and/or offensive lyrics is obviously very blurred.
A: If Never Let You Go was a contemporary classic, this is hyper-modern, right down to the music-video interlude. You’ve got to hand it to the Russians: with very few exceptions, they know how to write (or at least pick) damn good pop songs for the contest.
V: If we can’t have the Andorran school boys in the final, at least we get the sluttiest school girls this side of the Urals. The bridge is perfect.
38 Germany
B: Brilliant! I love the lines “Wie sie gehn und stehn / Wie sie dich ansehn / Und shohn öffnen sich Tasche und Herz”.
A: Bugger the women: I want to have Roger Cicero’s babies.
V: Sounds fantastic, but plastering the wall with his name probably wasn’t the best idea in hindsight, and the camerawork is very sluggish.
39 Ukraine
B: “Ruchki, ruchki ye! / Nu, nu, nu Helsinki! / Ukrajina – ce kl’jovo?” Bonkers.
A: As a piece of music, this is clever in ways you probably wouldn’t expect it to be.
V: The stage looks amazing. Apart from that, words fail me.
40 United Kingdom
B: Carry On Up the Eurosong.
A: Good vocals (and harmonies) save this from being utterly shameful. For all its failings, you can see why it would appeal to a British Eurovision audience, as backhanded a compliment as that may be.
V: Well, ‘camp’ would be an understatement. The visual effects are inspired, which is more than can be said for the props, although the NOTHING TO DECLARE sign is great.
40 United Kingdom
B: Carry On Up the Eurosong.
A: Good vocals (and harmonies) save this from being utterly shameful. For all its failings, you can see why it would appeal to a British Eurovision audience, as backhanded a compliment as that may be.
V: Well, ‘camp’ would be an understatement. The visual effects are inspired, which is more than can be said for the props, although the NOTHING TO DECLARE sign is great.
41 Romania
B: Fantastic rhythm to the lyrics, in all languages, but especially in the Russian lines “Gdye-to tam, kto-to tam, tebya lyubit, ne zabud / Skazhi da, lyubimaya, lyubi, lyubi ty menya”.
A: The multi-layered arrangement cements the sense of a piece of music not getting the treatment it deserves. It’s too good to have to exist under the label ‘novelty entry’, and yet that’s precisely what it turns out to be.
V: They’re just as unattractive a prospect as the Latvians, frankly. They sound alright though.
42 Armenia
B: Very bland lyrics for what is, arguably, a very bland ballad, only made more interesting by lines like “Anavart khosqer / Anapak huyser”, which make me wish it had all been in Armenian.
A: Hayko should have realised, as the song’s composer, that it would have been better in someone else’s hands. It’s not that he’s not a good singer – although he’s not that great either – but to me it lends itself to the lightness of touch that female vocalists tend to provide. There’s more strength to it as a piece of music than I recall there being, but as with the Belarusian entry, bits of it feel overlooked.
V: Someone should have told Hayko we had him down for a bleeding heart without the need for a tacky prop. Speaking of which: did the silly animatronic tree ever end up doing anything apart from dispensing toilet tissue? [Watches] Oh, I see it did. Hmm.
And so to the points...
1 point goes to FYR Macedonia
2 points go to Finland
3 points go to Russia
4 points go to Iceland
5 points go to Hungary
6 points go to Lithuania
7 points go to Albania
8 points go to Bosnia and Herzegovina
10 points go to Germany
and finally...
12 points go to...
Georgia!
The wooden spoon goes to Switzerland.
And so to the points...
1 point goes to FYR Macedonia
2 points go to Finland
3 points go to Russia
4 points go to Iceland
5 points go to Hungary
6 points go to Lithuania
7 points go to Albania
8 points go to Bosnia and Herzegovina
10 points go to Germany
and finally...
12 points go to...
Georgia!
The wooden spoon goes to Switzerland.
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