Life after Helsinki 2007 Eurovision

That's how Paradise Oskar or rather Axel Ehnström (19) described his winning song in Euroviisut 2011. He looked rightly a bit confused and stated the party will go on in Germany. " I came here just to have fun and sing my song!" .  But his way to victory was rather special: YLE picked his song from the insent songs to the web selection directly to the semifinal where he qualified easily and then in final went first to superfinal and then beat the other two songs, or rather Saara Aalto 47-41, Father Mckenzie had no share in the superfinal.Worth noting is that the top-3 is all from the open web selection! He's only 19 and just started his studies in pop and jazz conservatory. He's from Kirkkonummi near Helsinki. His MySpace has just three songs so far so he is a real newcomers who started singing and playing guitar just a couple of years ago. When did we last have such a young and fresh name for Eurovision? 1962?  He has written his song himself and Leri Leskinen h...

He did it and Finland went Da da dam. He also won the fan award. I think this is an entry we can be proud of whatever happens in Germany. 1. Paradise Oskar - Da da dam 47% 2. Saara Aalto - Blessed with love 41% 3. Father McKenzie - Good enough 12%

So, after the third semifinal and YLE's surprising wildcard we have the ten finalists for the Finnish final on February 12, 2011 in Turku, the European capital of culture in 2011. And there's a little bit everything from gospel to glamrock, metal to acoustic pop, radiopop and powerballads. All three qualifiers from the internet selection got to the final making way to the big changes next year in Euroviisut. Six songs are in English now and Iivanainen, Hintsanen and Misic have said they will sing in English should they win so only Maunuksela is left in Finnish, and he has said it stays in Finnish no matter what. Two big fan favourites didn't make it, Jimi Constantine and Tommi Soidinmäki and YLE's wildcard went to Eveliina Määttä instead of them. Weird. I guess I'm now for Paradise Oskar and Stala & So. With Johanna Iivanainen (in English) as the black horse... Saara Aalto - Blessed with love Cardiant - Rapture in time Father McKenzie - Good enough Sami Hi...

Surprising results in Euroviisut 2011 second semifinal, proving just how important the live performance is and how it can change it all. Precontest favourite and serious contender for Germany Jimi Constantine is out - unless YLE picks it out as the wildcard - propably due to the performance that was way too much and totally killed a good song. Or was it the champagne? Money? Stripping? Same for Soma Manuchar , only that she didn't have a good song to start with and the styling was totally disastrous. WTF was she wearing? So, less is more Paradise Oskar made it and proved the guy is a born perfomer, loves the camera and camera loves him back. Milana Misic made it as well with her cocktail of Balcan, latin and Finnish music and stylish performance by Osku Heiskanen. Last but not least Father McKenzie with their Swedish style song and performance. Let's see how the things turn out in the last and third semifinal next Friday. After tonight nothing can be taken for granted!

After the rather weak first semifinal last Friday in Finland the things heat up tomorrow with the second one. Jimi Constantine and Paradise Oskar, two big favourites and possible winners are in and the other three Milana Misic, Father McKenzie and Soma Manuchar also have their share of supporters. Last week's semi however was a success for TV2 as it was the most watched programme on Friday and also the third most watched the whole week with 634.000 viewers.  This week I suppose Jimi Constantine and Paradise Oskar should qualify if they do well live, especially the unexprienced latter one.I wouldn't mind if Jimi won the whole thing and went to Germany! Then it's open field and I wouldn't be surprised if Milana qualified ahead of fan favourite (see Automatic Eye last week) Father McKenzie while I think Soma will have Jonna's fate? Check out the songs and Jimi's and Soma's videos here: Jimi Constantine - Party to party Father McKenzie - Good enough Milana Misi...

Father McKenzie is one of the three acts that qualified from the open internet selection with their Good enough . Time will tell is they're good enough to go all the way (sorry, couldn't resist!). The band is a Finnish-Swedish coctail and has its base in Sweden. They have been playing together for a couple of years now and picked their name from Eleanor Rigb y by the Beatles. Tobias Granbacka is the singer/keyboarder, Emil Johansson bassist/vocalist, Simon Larsson plays drums and sings backing vocals and the guitarist is Jochum Juslin. That's all I found to tell about them so they're real newcomers. Father McKenzie will be taking part in the second semifinal on January 21, 2011 with Good enough .

So we did get some heavymetal in Euroviisut once again when Cardiant qualified. Some pop with Father McKenzie and a ballad by Saara Aalto. Fair enough. Another rather secret internet selection is over. I don't understand why YLE doesn't promote this in any way. If I wasn't fan I wouldn't even know it was on. Again. I never saw any promo on TV, the papers were not writing about it one word as far as I have seen and tonight's "Results show" tops it all: full five minutes at odd hour 6.45 PM where they played maybe 20 secs of each selected song. Even Jaana didn't bother to come by.... 

The voting has ended and tomorrow 6.45PM local time we will know the three qualifiers for the Euroviisut 2011 semifinals from the open internet selection. There is no favourite this year and the various polls give very different restuls. YLE announced a couple of days ago the Top-5 is (in no particular order) Chorale, Father McKenzie, Joel Främling, Sara Sayed and Saara Aalto. In my blog Tony Green won with 12 votes, followed by Chorale, Cardiant and Blackbird 8 each, and Saara Aalto completes the Top-5 with six votes. But if we look at the results of viisukuppila.fi and escstats.fi things get tricky.  Tony Green wins by the Finnish voters (78 voters) and comes... last by the foreigners (16 voters). Chorale comes 2nd by Finns, 6th by foreigners. Father McKenzie is quite agreed on coming 3rd by Finns and winning by foreigners. Paul Oxley comes 4th by Finns but only third last by foreigners. Blackbird is 5th by Finns, second by foreigners so they're doing fine. Saara Aalto is only 9t...

The Finnish fans in viisukuppila.fi have been voting for their favourites in the Euroviisut internet selection and after 50 votes Tony Green is in the lead followed by Chorale, Father McKenzie, Paul Oxley and Christa Renwall. You can see the full list here . Maybe it is good to keep in mind the general public voting didn't wuite agree with the fans last year, so... And if you can't bother to listen them all here's a recap .