After the excitement of the first semi-final, I’m munching on a bacon and egg ciabatta accompanied by a large latte, so I am easing myself into the morning after. Time for reflection on the results – and as you can tell from my featured image, it wasn’t a good night for “Blackbird”…
So firstly, here are the qualifiers and non-qualifiers:
Qualifiers: Sweden, Australia, Belgium, Azerbaijan, Portugal, Greece, Poland, Moldova, Cyprus, Armenia
Non-qualifiers: Georgia, Albania, Montenegro, Finland, Iceland, Czech Republic, Slovenia, Latvia
In terms of my prediction, I got 9/10 – the one I didn’t expect (nor did anyone) was Finland not going through. Poland was the one I hadn’t predicted to go through, but was in my 11th position in terms of qualification chances, so I’m pretty satisfied I got this mostly right.
Not that I would have picked that 10 for myself. I’m still stunned that beautiful Finnish song and performance didn’t get through. I heard rumours that she sang a little flat in the jury show and maybe that did for it – this song definitely is one that needs the extra jury votes though.
The Greek-Cypriot voting bloc proved its worth as expected – Greece, Cyprus, Australia, UK and Armenia are all regular points givers to Greece and Cyprus. And to Australia for that matter.
If I had a choice I would have had Finland, Montenegro and Czech Republic as qualifying and taking out Australia, Greece, and (controversially), Sweden.
Big congrats to Portugal, making their first final since 2010. It’s all shaping up to be Portugal’s best ever result; remember, they have never won in 49 previous attempts and have never even finished higher than sixth…
Syncing less well with the 10 actual qualifiers were the results of the 9 person Chiswick/Brighton/Clacton voting panel. I think suffice to say that in a smaller group, results get skewed if just a handful of people have certain songs as their big favourites – hence the results below of our voting! However, I think we were spot on in our winner – sadly the rest of Europe wasn’t….
Qualifiers:
1. Finland (192 points)
2. Montenegro (185 points)
3. Sweden (179 points)
4. Poland (176 points)
4. Slovenia (176 points)
6. Greece (166 points)
7. Moldova (162 points)
8. Iceland (161 points)
9. Cyprus (160 points)
10. Armenia (155 points)
Non-qualifiers:
11. Portugal (152 points)
12. Czech Republic (148 points)
13. Azerbaijan (147 points)
14. Georgia (142 points)
15. Australia (139 points)
16. Albania (124 points)
17. Belgium (118 points)
18. Latvia (102 points)
1 minute clips of three of the automatic qualifiers were shown (they were filmed during the jury show the previous night) – for this semi it was Spain, UK and Italy. I think the UK has done so well with its staging this year and have a singer who performs well every single time – enjoy the full version below (but don’t watch it if you want to keep it as surprise for the grand final!)
So on to the second semi… As before, I’ll post a preview/prediction post tomorrow before it begins, but unless the jury show tonight starts sorting the pack out, this is an incredibly open semi-final and I defy anyone to predict the 10 that will go through!