Another great and enjoyable show and mercifully for those of watching on the BBC, fewer cut aways from the actual show items after the contrived “funny” Line of Duty skit we got during semi-final 1. Fewer shocks and surprises in this one I think, aside from one very big surprise. I felt I had more certainty over what would qualify (even though feeling sad that some ones I wanted to qualify would not) and that is what duly happened.
There were very few surprises in who qualified actually – all of the below I was expecting to qualify:
- San Marino, Greece, Iceland, Serbia, Albania, Portugal, Bulgaria, Finland and Switzerland
All the big favourites got through, and I think generally showed why they are the favourites. Flo Rida brought great energy to Senhit‘s already fabulous performance – and San Marino have been awarded with closing the grand final.
Albania and Portugal were perhaps the ones that people had been least sure about, but having seen them on stage both in rehearsals and the live show, I think you easily see why they got through.
The big surprise was the qualification of Moldova and the non-qualification of Austria. Who knows what dark arts Philipp Kirkorov employed to get this sub-par song into the grand final. It may have some catchy hooks, but it was vocally poor and fairly flat. While I am no fan of the Austrian song, you’d have thought the vocal performance would have seen it get through.
As for the other non-qualifiers, I was sad but not surprised about Benny Cristo not getting through with “omaga” but it just didn’t come alive on the Eurovision stage. He hasn’t ruled out wanting to enter again – let’s hope he comes back with something more energetically staged as he is such a great guy and bags of charisma. And spare a thought for Uku and Samanta – so many years trying to get to the contest and not making the grand final… But running order (for Estonia) and song/performance/staging (for Latvia) did for them I am afraid…
So we already have the grand final running order but I will be talking about that in a video/blog post very soon! All so exciting now!