Looks like Earth has made another trip around the sun, and we have returned to Eurovision season. Well, I guess (technically) we are in the National Selection Season, which is when the competing countries will select the songs that will go to the contest.
-While Ukraine won last year’s contest, the UK (more specifically, Liverpool) will co-host the contest with Ukraine. Since Ukraine is still dealing with Russia’s invasion, the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) felt that it would be best for the contest and the participants if the 2nd place country hosted the contest.
-Although the contest will take place in the UK, I’m intrigued to see how the UK will incorporate Ukrainian elements into the contest.
-This year, it looks like we’ll have 37 countries in the contest – Albania, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Belgium, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Moldova, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, San Marino, Serbia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine, and the United Kingdom.
-From last year’s contest, Bulgaria, Montenegro, and N. Macedonia will not return.
-I cannot say that I love the logo, but I do not hate it; however, I do like the slogan – United by Music.
-We even have the countries that will participate in each semi-final
Image courtesy of Eurovision World (***)
-This year’s contest will be kind of interesting because the countries that will move from the semifinal stage to the final stage will be determined 100% by the televote. Also, folks outside of the participating countries can vote in the contest.
-While I do not follow the national finals, I tend to listen to the songs once they have been selected. This year, I do not think that I’m going to listen to the songs too many times from now until May. I’m changing my approach because I was over a lot of the songs by April.
-Actually, I take that back, I did watch Benidorm Fest (Spain’s national selection) because the hubby is Spanish. Other than Benidorm Fest, I’m gonna pass on the rest of the national finals. I don’t have anything against national finals, but there are simply too many for me. Since these finals obviously take place outside of the US, it’s way too much work to figure out how I can consistently watch them (eg Youtube, the public broadcaster’s app, VPN, streams on websites, etc). While I’m ok with technology, I’m the type of person that can become easily frustrated when technology doesn’t work out.
-For instance, check out the calendar for this Saturday’s national finals (keep in mind that many countries have MULTIPLE selection rounds). There will be NINE national finals that will pretty much overlap with each other. I definitely do not have the patience to watch multiple things at the same time on multiple devices (TV, laptop, iPhone, iPad, laptop #2). More power to the people who do.
-Since I am curious about the songs that will compete in the contest, I will take a listen once the countries have made their choices and rank them in batches of 7 or 8. Here are my current standings.
-Here’s the Spotify playlist of the current group of songs
-Somewhat related to Eurovision: It looks like the American Song Contest will not return this year, and its future is uncertain. I’ve made a few rants about the contest:
American Song Contest – General Thoughts (***)
Image courtesy of TV Series Finale (***)
-While this isn’t a huge surprise, I will admit that I was slightly annoyed that many hardcore Eurovision fans were rejoicing with this news. My thing: if you hate a show and did not watch it, then why do you care so much that it was canceled? I think one of the reasons why so many from the hardcore fandom hated ASC (even though they didn’t watch it) was they assumed the US was trying to ‘bully’ its way into ESC. When ASC was announced, there was so much vitriol about the US trying to take over everything. It’s kind of interesting because there has not been the same amount of anger regarding similar future versions of the contest for Canada and Latin America.