Life after Helsinki 2007 Eurovision

  Netta Barzilai has won the HakokHav Haba l'Eurovizion and flies to Lisbon for Israel becoming the third Eurovision act confirmed today. Tonight she sung covers like all the other finalists, and the search for a song that fits her starts full time.  The first round was done in the usual selection way and sadly saw the exit of Chen Aharoni who only scored 72%, but Netta was close with 74%! as losers of their duels. The judges sent Chen home..... The clear winner was Mergui with 90% (vs. Chen) and Riki second with 81%. (vs. Netta) The top-3 continued the race singing a couple of songs each before the jury voted, and then finally the televotes. Netta won jury vote but Mergui beat her in the televotes barely and here are the final results: 1. Netta Barzilai (jury 104 + televote 106) 210 2. Jonathan Mergui (88 + 117) 205 3. Riki Ben Ari (78 + 47) 125 4. Chen Aharoni - PS. Didn't she try already last year or do I remember wrong? Or some other ...

  The journey started in October 2017 and 31 shows later we have only the four finalist left. Among them Chen Aharoni from the first episode, who should be the one anyways. Maybe they should have selected him internally and get over with it? Or who knows? Maybe we will have a surprise winner after all...?  Here they are: Chen Aharoni Netta Barzilai Riki Ben Ari Jonathan Mergui The open submission for the song has been opened, and once the winner is out they will search a suitable song for him/her among those and it will be made public in due time.....

  The Israel marathon selection HaKochav Haba Le’eyrovizion 2018 has been going on for 19 episodes already, dropping the artists from original 5000 wnnabes first to 120 and 70 were left for the next round, and now they have been cut to 20 in further jury auditions, meaning some names who did very well in the first round are out like Zohar Razier who scored 97%, Eden Newman Hyatt (94%), Tslil Goldman and Michael Korbin (88% both). On the other hand artists that barely made it to the next step qualifier for this last phase, so everything can happen between one good or bad audition round. Chen Aharoni is the pre-contest favorite and the biggest name in the list. Let's see if he make it in the end. But there's also quite a few singers with oriental vibe so let's see if Israel joins in with the more ethnic and original sound? Further televised auditions will drop the rest and in the end we have the Israeli Eurovision entrant for Lisbon 2018 Eurovision song contest ...

I'm still sad the treatment Dana International got in Germany for her Ding dong . I like the song and it was a clear winner in the Israeli selection from the start. On the other hand if she didn't want to win as she said somewhere why participate? Such a shame. But let's see what else was there? Actually quite interesting stuff which proves a national final after many years was a good move. One song stands out still, Chen Aharoni's Or . The staging was a mess with most everything you can manage to fit into 3 minutes but all that could have been sorted out and Israel would have had a very good entry that had all the chances to reach the final and do well there.

Portugal's Setùbal hosts already for the third time Eurovision stars live in concert on September 10, 2011. The guest of honour is none other than Marie Myriam , the French winner of 1977 of Portuguese origin and this bloggers most significant ever Eurovision entry's performer. Other guests who have already had the taste of the Eurovision stage are Jari Sillanpää from Finland, Marcin Mrozinski from Poland, Igor Cukrov from Croatia,  Lucia Perez from Spain, Chiara from Malta and Andrea Demirovic from Montenegro. On top of that familiar names from various national finals: Chen Aharoni from Israel, Jenny Silver from Sweden besides local stars Filipa Ruas and Rui Andrade . I see there several names I'd love to see besides lovely Marie M but sigh, have to skip this time again..... :-(