The second semi-final, as expected, proved to have results of mixed fortunes, with my predictions doing OK, most of my big faves going through, but losing a couple of songs that I loved (to songs/performances I definitely didn’t!). Overall I got 8 out of 10 right for this most unpredictable of semi-finals and I feel like I was pretty close to a 9/10.
The qualifiers
To recap, here are the qualifiers (listed in order of show running order, not when they were announced): Finland, Serbia, Azerbaijan, Australia, Estonia, Romania, Poland, Belgium, Sweden and Czech Republic.
The non-qualifiers
Once again, listed via running order: Israel, Georgia, Malta, San Marino, Cyprus, Ireland, North Macedonia and Montenegro.
The shocks and surprises
I think the biggest shock for fans was the qualification of Belgium – and I had put it in my unlikely to qualify list, but I did think this always had potential to go down well with juries and that does seem to have been the case.
Belgium going through meant that I lost one of my absolute favourites – San Marino. It was a true spectacle and I’d recommend you take a watch of the semi-final performance. Achille Lauro is a huge star in Italy so I have no fears for his career, but it’s such a shame Europe won’t get to see this on Saturday (and for San Marino too).
I had said that we had three songs of similar genre and qualification chances: Israel, Ireland and Romania. I had expected Romania and Ireland to go through but Finland got one of the qualification positions (I was very tempted to put Finland in over Ireland in my predictions).
While I loved Ireland and am gutted for Brooke who performed the bejesus out of her song, I think Romania was the strongest of the three bops – and my bunch of friends who watched it also thought so as Romania finished in our group’s top 5 of the semi and above Ireland and Israel.
That is now all in the past and it is on to the grand final!