Life after Helsinki 2007 Eurovision

Finland has its #umk16 final tonight and the winner will be our 50th Eurovisison entry. Roope Salminen is hosting the show from Helsinki with 2013 entrant Krista Siegfrids and Eurovision 2007 hostess Jaana Pelkonen will be there, too. Eurovision 2006 winner Lordi is performing and celebrating the 10th anniversary of their win and also last year's participants Pertti Kurikan Nimipäivät grace the show with their presence. For the first time for a very long time, or ever, the polls give no clue who will win. Pre-contest favorite Saara Aalto is not doing so well in the polls, and the fan favorites Mikael Saari (He won the Finnish fanclub's Fan Award again) and Annice & Kimmo don't seem to appeal to the masses, nor Tuuli. Eini is doing well with general puclic, critics love Sandhja and Barbe-Q-Barbies is picking up speed. Being the only rock entry will surely be an advantage when the masses start to vote tonight, same goes for Eini having the only song in Finnish. Cri...

YLE's competition, commercial television MTV3 has also run its poll about the #UMK16 entries for its website readers. And like everywhere else (except Finnish Eurovision fans who are all still listening Mikael Saari's previous entry it seems... see the chart at bottom) it's very tight. Anything can happen tonight! Follow my live blog tonight! Cristal Sow   16,98% Eini   16,64% Barbe-Q-Barbies   16,37% Saara Aalto   16,11% Sandhja   10,65% Annica & Kimmo   8,56% Mikael Saari   8,15% Tuuli Okkonen circa 3% Stella Chrisitine circa 3% Fans voting:

The field is more open than maybe ever in #UMK16, the Finnish national selection for the Eurovision song contest 2016 in Stockholm. Early favorites aren't so strong as they should be (to compare last year when PKN scored 60-70% of votes in most every poll). I already posted about Ilta-Sanomat reader's poll here . Over 25.000 people voted and it finished a tie with Saara Aalto and Eini, both scoring 18%.  Later this week Iltalehti had similar poll and it finished with Saara Aalto winning with 15,1%. She's closely followed by Sandhja (14,2%) and Barbe-Q-Barbies (13,9%). Both performed in the last semifinal last Saturday while Saara was in the first one three weeks ago. With about 12% right after them we have Cristal Snow, Eini and Mikael Saari. The remaining about 20% is divided by Stella Christine, Annica & Kimmo and Tuuli Okkonen so it's all very close. If we look at the Spotify hits, Sandhja is the clear winner with 23% in the past few days. Cristal Snow i...

Ilta-Sanomat, one of the biggest newspapers in Finland run a poll after the last #umk16 semifinal who should win and surprisingly Eini has caught up with Saara Aalto as the favorite! This blogger couldn't be more delighted as I am in #teamEini. Out of 25.040 votes they both scored 18%. At first Saara was leading but then Eini has gained votes, as has Mikael Saari while Saara and Barbe-Q-Barbies had lost some along the way.  Here are the results: EINI 18% SAARA AALTO 18% CRISTAL SNOW 14% MIKAEL SAARI 12% SANDHJA 11% BARBE-Q-BARBIES 10% ANNICA & KIMMO 8% STELLA CRISTINE 6% TUULI OKKONEN 4% As one can see, it's very close and there's no runaway winner candidate like last year for example. This list is radically different from escstats fan poll where Kimmo & Annica are leading, Saari second, Aalto third followed by Sandhja, Snow, Eini, B-Q-B, Okkonen and Stella, but then that includes still all #umk16 entries. In the F...

The third and last #UMK16 semifinal takes place in YLE's studios in Helsinki. Roope Salminen and Krista Siegfrids - fresh from Melodifestivalen - will be hosting the show, and Raakel Liekki is in charge in the Post-Modulation scene. Chisu will be doing the interval show and one can only wish one day YLE would just skip all UMK and send her off to Eurovision....  ----------- Join me at 8pm  for live blogging----------------- Here we go again! Roope's got Krista back and is all kisses and hugs :-) No wonder, she's dressed in pink minidress and long silver boots looking very ding if not even dong! After chat with post-modulators and voting instructions it's party time..... Lieminen - Pehmeiden arvojen vaalijat Starts with a human pyramid and he has his helmet headed dancers and robot musicians and a lot of neon and all that we already know from the video. Visually very entertaining and smooth, vocally a bit less - but then he's been in silence all...

Third and final semifinal of #UMK16 comes from YLE's studios in Helsinki. Three songs will be televoted to the final. And in the final we will have the 50th Finnish Eurovision entry! Here we have mostly totally or almost unknown artists to the great public. Tuuli Okkonen might ring a bell and she's also an UMK returnee. Among the songwriters the other by the group of Eurovision wannabes infesting every national final they can.  Lieminen - Pehmeiden arvojen puolesta (Pro soft values)  (Lieminen, P. Siitonen) Review Tuuli Okkonen - Don't wake me up   (Michael James Down, Primoz Poglajen, Dimitri Stassos, Tuuli Okkonen, Johnny Sanchez, Sara Ljungren/Michael James Down, Primoz Poglajen, Tuuli Okkonen) Review Gušani Brothers - Poom poom  (Irfan/Gušani Brothers) Review Barbe-Q-Barbies - Let me out  (Janne Saksa/Niki Westerback, Tracy Lipp) Review Pietarin Spektaakkeli - Liian kuuma (Too hot)   (Pietari Kiviharju, Antti Hynnin...

Barbe-Q-Barbies has been around since 2002 and has released three albums so far. They say they don't follow trends but do music they feel like, all from acoustic ballads to pure rock. They have played with WASP and New York Dolls, Bam Margera says they are "propably the best all-girl rock band ever". They are loud. Proud. Play dirty rock. After important rock clubs and festivals they are ready to step into the Globen glitterball and kick some ass. 15/20

The fan lottery for the possible #UMK16 names goes on and on. Some new names have been digged out, but they seem more like wild guessing than anything based on proper facts like it could be the case here . Maybe. Those who know must be having a laugh, and over the past days I have started wondering one thing: How come all the instrumental demos sound so similar, with a couple of exceptions? Has someone played them again with the same programming just to confuse fans even more? ;-) Ok, that was my contribution to this mystery. I can't even bother to think myself who these could be, I am just curiously waiting for January 12 and the revelation. As it seems we might be having quite a good year ahead of us.....  Meanwhile enjoy their music after the jump....