As usual, I am struggling to write this through a Eurovision-induced hangover and the onset of PED (post Eurovision depression). I may still be in the host city of Lisbon, but that doesn’t temper the pounding head! I may have imbibed some of the legendary/notorious Mateus last night… Anyway, on to a few final garbled thoughts from last night’s eventful final!
My mind is a bit scrambled so this will be just a set of quick bullets before I go running for the Ibuprofen:
- Netta was a very worthy winner and interesting to see that the overwhelming favourite before the contest coming back to triumph after a blip in the days running up to the final.
- The Israeli win also keeps their habit of winning every twenty years (1978, 1998, 2018) though they did also win in 1979!
- Cyprus came very close to getting that first win – closer than they have ever come before. Since Portugal’s win, Cyprus are now the country with the most appearances without a win but hopefully they will take heart from this best ever result.
- I know everyone was surprised with Austria winning the jury vote, but he was my number one as you may recall, so seems I was aligned with the juries! Also means that two of my top 3 aligned with the overall top 3 (Austria and Israel). I might have had Cyprus in my top 3 as well actually if I had done my rankings during the contest.
- Once again, Sweden and Australia were marked highly by the juries – and both were in the bottom 5 in the televote. I have said repeatedly that those two countries are consistently overmarked by juries and I think this just vindicates what I’ve been saying.
- SuRie did the UK proud to the very end and I can’t get over how amazingly she carried on after that idiot invading the stage and grabbing her mic mid-song. Seriously though, how was a guy with a backpack allowed to get there in the first place?!
- Some pre-contest fan faves fizzled out somewhat – France the most notable one and it was no Fairytale return for former winner Alexander Rybak, though he still did better than that song deserved. And also Finland didn’t do so well, perennial second place Saara Aalto came second from last… But at least she made the final which had been her dream.
- Czech Republic easily got their best result ever and Germany finally made it out of the bottom 5 after several years there.
- Overall, another great contest and it was such a great experience to finally attend in person!
We may have been abroad but thanks to some digital wizardry, I still organised some voting amongst friends. From about 30 people, here were the results (UK was excluded) and as you will see, our top two aligned with the rest of Europe!
1 Israel 🇮🇱
2 Cyprus 🇨🇾
3 Australia 🇦🇺
4 Ireland 🇮🇪
5 Finland 🇫🇮
6 Estonia 🇪🇪
7 Ukraine 🇺🇦
8 Denmark 🇩🇰
9 Moldova 🇲🇩
10 France 🇫🇷
11 Czech Republic 🇨🇿
12 Austria 🇦🇹
13 Hungary 🇭🇺
14 Sweden 🇸🇪
15 Germany 🇩🇪
16 Norway 🇳🇴
17 Lithuania 🇱🇹
18 Albania 🇦🇱
19 Italy 🇮🇹
20 Slovenia 🇸🇮
21 Portugal 🇵🇹
22 Serbia 🇷🇸
23 Bulgaria 🇧🇬
24 Netherlands 🇳🇱
25 Spain 🇪🇸
So that is it for another year but I will keep the site as active as I can in the coming months. I usually have a bit of a hiatus from writing on the site but will try and not hibernate quite as much as usual!