Life after Helsinki 2007 Eurovision

Let's continue the series and kill some time having a look at the last decade and see who were the Top-10 best scoring countries in the Eurovision song contest in the past ten years. The ways to calculate are many and here I have used the simple average placement method (and it's not all so serious). Next up is Azerbaijan at n.o 5. Azerbaijan entered with a Top-10 finish and continued the trend with five consegutive Top-5 finishes including a win before all the vote buying scandal and all that exploded. Miracuslously after that they didn't trouble the Top-10 until last year again, and had even one NQ in their table.... Fair enough. Azerbaijan has sent good entries, no doubt about that, but what annoys me personally is the lack of local work in them. In fact, only their debut entry has been written by Azeris (unless its credited by alias). I remember all Azeri entries way too well thanks to their usually very original stagings. 2011 Ell & Nikki - Running sc...

Eurovision acts have always been rather creative with merchandise from Belarusian vodkabottles to Swedish boxers and some less memorable items. Especially the eastern countries have been rather generous with them... Even though the economical situation everywhere may have ut a stop to that, some countries are not even giving away any promos not to mention any other stuff. This year Macedonia has decided to use the money ment for promos and stuff for something else instead: they both an incubator for premature babies in Skpje hospital, but that's another story. Azeris instead have all sort of things from jackets to pencils. No carpet this year though....

One of my top favorite songs and a staging I'm not so sure at all. And it seems I'm not alone with this. Elnur's vocals are amazing, the song's melody is beautiful and I totally love the lyrics. It's all very dark with the lunar eclipse in the backgroud until 2 minutes when a lot of red is brushed into it. Looks like watercolors exloding. The for the finale the moon comes out and everything turns blue. Elnur is rather static standing in one spot most of the time while the two wolves dance around all the time. Well, propably it will look good on screen. If Azerbaijan fails a top-5 I blame staging.... 

This is one of those I have waited the most to see. One of my top songs and amazing singer, and Azerbaijan usually puts up a great show. And this year as always they have hired the best; the dancers are the winner of UK's So you think you can dance Lukas MacFarlaine from Canada and French Julia Spiesser and choreographer is Finnish-Swedish Ambra Succi, already behind Loreen. What could go wrong? I don't know, but this seems to be getting a bit mixed reactions. It's quite darl, we are in a scary forest with lunar eclipse, the wolfes are dancing around.... maybe a bit too much distracting from Elnur. Well, we have to wait and see how it looks on telly then. The song's great!

Here we go. Tomorrow the things start in Vienna for real and it's time to have a little round up. The past weeks I have been presenting my favorites from this year's Eurovision song contest and it's a weird year; the favorites stand out easily, so do the bottom ones and then there are awful many entries that are totally forgettable, uninteresting and .... well, forgettable.  Bubbling under on the list below these favorites I have in random order Portugal, Ireland, Georgia, Austria, Romania, Lithuania, Macedonia and United Kingdom. I want to see them live on stage before giving any further judgement. As usual I will post my rankings before each semifinal with the ones I want to qualify and the ones I think will qualify. Only that at this point it feels harder than ever.... Let's see how it goes :-) Here are direct links to my favorites and the joker San Marino, always close to my heart.  Italy - Il Volo - Grande amore Azerbaijan - Elnur Huseynov - Ho...

Elnur Hüseynov has not only released a Turkish version Karanlıklara Teslim Olmam of his Azeri entry Hour of the wolf for the Eurovision 2015 in Vienna but also a beautiful new video clip has been released shot in ever so wonderful Istanbul. Enjoy!  Oh wait there's more: a remix!

Elnur Hüseynov (28) is no stranger to Eurovision having already scored 8th place in 2008 when he provided Azerbaijan's debut entry Day after day in the contest with Samir. Since then this falsetto singingTurkmenistan born artist with the inceredible voice has starred in Notre-Dame de Paris in Ucraine and won O Ses Türkiye or  The Voice of Turkey where he even covered Sertab Erener's  Aşk , her opening act in Istanbul 2004 Eurovision and one of this blogger's favorite songs. Another reason to like Elnur.  Elnur's talent was discovered early and he attanded a school for gifted kids and specialized in piano. But he didn't chose music career first as he graduated from medical school with a degree in dentistry. Yet he wasn't only interested in teeth and took hairdressing classes. At some point he had time to graduate also from Music Collage, work at the Azerbaijan State Academic Opera and Ballet Theatre, sing in Azerbaijan State Philharmonic Choir and win a...

As rumoured ever since he won the Voice of Turkey Elnur Huseynov has been confirmed  for Azerbaijan with Hour of the wolf, a ballad written by an international team. Elnur is no stranger to Eurovision having represented Azerbaijan with Samir at its denut back in 2008 and scoring 8th place.The video for the song will be presented tomorrow but meanwhile you can listen to it here . This blogger thinks its one of the better ballads this year and I am pleased to see Elnur back.