Quite a bit of Eurovision news over the last few days, not least today’s reveal of the 6 acts in the UK national selection.

That takes place live on BBC4 this coming Friday, 26 February. The 6 songs were played for the first time on Ken Bruce’s Radio 2 show this morning. I think I have my top 2 or 3 already but you can take a listen for yourself at the BBC’s Eurovision site.

I think it’s a largely competent field – not sure there is a Eurovision winner amongst them, but baby steps! Whichever song wins, there is still time to hone it and there will be all the all important staging to get right.

Over the weekend the Ukrainian and Icelandic finals took place. Greta Salóme has indeed got her second crack at Eurovision glory (see my preview of the Iceland final). For Ukraine, they have a very interesting winner: Jamala. She’s a Crimean Tatar and her song “1944” is about Stalin’s brutal deportation of 240,000 ethnic Tatars from Ukraine’s Crimea region during the Second World War. Given the recent history of that region, I wonder how many votes they will get from Russia! You can read more about it in the Guardian.  (Yes, the Ukrainian Eurovision national final has made it into the Guardian!)

Coming up before Friday, we have the Cyprus song presentation this evening. We already know the Cypriot artists – Minus One, a rock band (unusual for Cyprus at Eurovision), but we’ll hear their song soon.

On Thursday, Germany’s national final takes place but I will make a separate post about that nearer the time!