All 43 songs in this year’s competition have now been revealed (and the version of the song that is being entered) so it’s getting near time for me to begin the preview countdown where I preview each country’s entry in the run up to May.
Last year, to keep things a bit more interesting, I moved away from doing a simple A-Z by country and revealed the entries in reverse order of how they had fared in the many YouTube videos Eurovision fans make where they rank all the songs. I then used the average ranking of each song to do determine the order I do the previews in, starting with the lowest ranked country.
This does involve me looking through a LOT of YouTube Top 43 videos, so my task over next week to ten days will be to watch an awful lot of these and enter results into one of my classic spreadsheets of doom.
In the meantime, you might like to be reminded of the results of last year’s YouTube based rankings (based on over 200 YouTube videos of Eurovision rankings) and how the order compares with actual results at Eurovision. Bear in mind that the hosts, Austria, and the Big 5 were guaranteed finishing in the top 27 in the real thing as they automatically qualified. Austria fell outside of the top 27 in the YouTube based rankings (and then finished with nul points in the final!)
Other observations: Belgium, Latvia, Serbia and Cyprus all did much better in the real event – perhaps a testament to how some songs grow in popularity in the weeks running up to the event and/or their live performances brings the song to life in a way the music video does not.
Also, very clear Spain was massively overrated based on YouTube rankings – Spanish Eurovision fans are notably passionate in their support for their entry and woe betide the YouTuber who ranks Spain less than in the top 5! Germany and Albania were also big losers in terms of high YouTube ranking and actual result)
I’ve listed them in their YouTube ranking order. Actual result is in brackets – DNQ denotes did not qualify from semi-final.
- Estonia (7)
- Sweden (1)
- Spain (21)
- Slovenia (14)
- Norway (8)
- Italy (3)
- Albania (17)
- Germany (27)
- Azerbaijan (12)
- Russia (2)
- Australia (5)
- Georgia (11)
- Israel (9)
- Belgium (4)
- Iceland (DNQ)
- Malta (DNQ)
- Belarus (DNQ)
- Netherlands (DNQ)
- Switzerland (DNQ)
- Czech Republic (DNQ)
- Ireland (DNQ)
- Latvia (6)
- France (25)
- Lithuania (18)
- Greece (19)
- Romania (15)
- United Kingdom (24)
- Macedonia (FYROM) (DNQ)
- Poland (23)
- Austria (26)
- Montenegro (13)
- Armenia (16)
- Serbia (10)
- Hungary (20)
- Denmark (DNQ)
- Portugal (DNQ)
- San Marino (DNQ)
- Moldova (DNQ)
- Cyprus (22)
- Finland (DNQ)