John from 58Points will be out-n-about for the national selection season: Eesti Laul in Tallinn Norge Melodigrandprix in Oslo Looking forward to getting his winter on at the two national finals. He will be writing for ESCInsight in Lisbon.
Portugal’s 2017 victory was a landmark: a first victory after 50 attempts, a non-English language victory for only the second time in the televote era, and the first aligned victory (in terms of jury and public rankings) since 2014. All of which makes for a comprehensive victory…unless all is not necessarily as it seems, if you dig a bit deeper. So dig we have. Or at least tried
This was just pure joy.
Before this year’s Contest, most fans would probably agree that hip hop is the one genre that has not done nearly as well at the Eurovision when compared to its global popularity. Although 2003 champion Sertab Erener rapped her way through the bridge of Every Way That I Can. the song, however, was more a […]
Aside from its own argot—because expressions like pre-selection, do a Rossinelli, PED, Eurovision-by-numbers, styling och consulting, make no sense outside ESC fanland—few topics are as vexing as the issue of language at the Eurovision. Whilst for the most part the Contest using English as its business language is accepted (with French increasingly only used for […]
Around a hundred million people watched at least part of this year’s Grand Final. In fact, for many viewers the Saturday night show is the Eurovision Song Contest. However, most of the songs in a Grand Final have to earn their place through qualification from a semi-final—and only twice in the televote era has an […]
As we await clarification about the dates (hopefully identical to 2017), city (hopefully Lisbon), and venue (hopefully MEO Arena) for 2018, we’ve drilled down a bit into the fortunes of this year’s semi-finalists. There were 18 songs competing in each semi-final and half of the pre-qualified countries’ juries and public also voted in each. Therefore, […]
My latest on why Estonia’s national selection Eesti Laul snatches relegation from the jaws of qualification is now up at ESCInsight.
In many respects 2017 has been a noteworthy one. In this first article we take a look at some of the Grand Final results. This is the first in a series: subsequently we will drill down into particular elements of this year’s results, including detailed looks at the two semi-finals. Joy More than fifty years […]
We have made our annual update to the League Table page. Here’s what’s changed subsequent to the Kyiv 2017 results: Portugal earns its first ever points—with its maiden win and first ever top 5 result for Salvador Sobral and Amar Pelos Dois—but a delegation needs a lot more than 5 points (the value of a […]
