Life after Helsinki 2007 Eurovision

The Sammarinese ambitious national selection including and welcoming the whole globe finally comes to an end tonight. The selection hasn't been saved from controversies, minor scandals, disqualifications and withdrawals - the latest came yesterday when Big artist Blind had to withdraw as he is ill. His song would have been Non mi perdo più . Shame, as this song is maybe the best I have heard so far, Can't do a review as most of the songs aren't available as yet and the emerging artists showing are just plain bad. Achille Lauro has caused the biggest stir, let's see if it's all laid down for him to win after all? The auditions for the emerging artists started in December in San Marino and out of 585 submissions and 66 showed up for the auditions. Long story short 17 made the Emerging artists final and nine of them pass to the final tonight with nine Big artists. All in all this is what we have wanted all these years, and a fun idea. However the initial selection shou...

OMG San Marino I love you! You just keep surprising us year after year and this time the surprise is you really did what I think you should have done already years ago: Bring into contest some major Italian acts. And boy did you deliver! Starting with Achille Lauro that hardly has time to move from Sanremo to San Marino, Sanremo winner Valerio Scanu and a real Sanremo veteran and global hit maker Ivana Spagna. And that's just a start. Let's start with Ivana Spagna , my Eurovision dream of yesteryears. She scored a worldwide hit with Call me in 1987 and a string of hits followed like Easy lady , I wanna be your wife and so on until she made her Sanremo debut 1995 placing third with Gente come noi . She's been singing in both languages on and off ever since. Five Sanremos in competition, twice more as guest. Countless festivals and awards. 12 albums, six EPs, 15 compilations and over 50 singles later she's finally giving Eurovision a chance. Love it! Valerio Scanu , run...

As always, Sanremo's newcomer selection is featuring many, many names from other talent shows, or even previous years Sanremo selections who maybe didn't quite make it yet to stardom or even minor notoriety. All can change in a moment, ask Mahmood for example!  This time there aren't so many names this blogger would be familiar with that much, but I have for example featured I Desideri in my Naples series, and I'm aware of Francesco Monte, a reality television figure who's now aiming to become also a singer. Thomas Cheval, Wrongonyou and Avincola also ring a bell.  Anyways, from X Factor we have Martina Attili, Cecco e Cipo, David Shorty, Nova, Sierra and Daria Huber. From Amici we have Giulia Molino, Walter Ricci and from The Voice the before mentioned Thomas Cheval and Mattia Lever. Add the latest Castrocaro winner Watt as one of their prizes is a free ticket to the auditions. That makes a total of 61 of them.  After two days of live auditions (October 19 and 20) ...