Life after Helsinki 2007 Eurovision

While waiting for the entries for UMK2023 aka Finland's national selection for Eurovision song contest let's look back at some of the best non winning ones from yesteryear. Euroviisut 2000, what a mess! Nightwish was the clear televote (well, telephone) winner getting the double of votes the runner up got), the jury winner was Nylon Beat while Nina Åström, sadly a random nobody before and after Eurovision won placing jury 3rd and people's 2nd won with A little bit . A cute little harmless tune. Anna Eriksson placed jury 2nd and people's 3rd and 2nd overall 4 points short of Nina with a real Eurovision banger. Oot voimani mun   (You are my power) would have been composer Petri Laaksonen's third Eurovision entry. Instead it became a huge hit and Finland's only winner so far in the OGAE Second Chance song contest. Oh, and Nina finished 18th with 18 points in the end and was never heard again.

Yle organized among its other consolation Eurovision 2020 programming also a voting to find out the most loved Finnish entries of each decade ( here ). And this is no surprise: Hard rock hallelujah!   When eveything else has been tried go over the top and just risk it full time. It paid off. The hell froze over and liberated Finns from the decades long trauma of "Finland zero points" and for a year or so everyone was an Eurovision and Lordi fan. Well, it didn't last long...... Once again Finns had to sit home thanks to poor results in 2001 and 2003 before that insanity was changed. Or rather semi-final introduced. 2006 Lordi - Hard rock hallelujah  63,3% 2002 Laura Voutilainen - Addicted to you  10,7% 2007 Hanna Pakarinen - Leave me alone  8,6% 2008 Teräsbetoni - Missä miehet ratsastaa   6,5% 2009 Waldo's People - Lose control  5.6% 2004 Jari Sillanpää - Takes 2 to tango   3,7% 2005 Geir Rönning - Why? 1,0% 2000 Nina Åstro...

Compromise. Not a pretty word. That's what BBC is doing. Add OGAE and you will end up a total mess. Ask YLE. Finland involved OGAE members and various juries in the selection and ended sending Edea in 1998 leaving Jari Sillanpää home and his song is an evergreen today while Edea? Or the song.... And again in 2000 Nina Åström won without being anyone's favorite and is today a totally forgotten one while Anna Eriksson  wnet on to win OGAE Second chance and is totday a megastar and what to say about  Nightwish ? A true missed chance.  So, good luck BBC and prepaire for the worst. Ok anyways, the procedure is that 45 OGAE UK members divided in five groups of nine will each review 60 song and pick up their personal top-5. Actually this might be the saving aspect of this method. As a smaller group of persons hear only a smaller group of songs. Then each groups top-5 is sent forward so there will be 25 most likely heavily compromised and melodifestivalized songs to dea...

South Africans are real Eurovision fans and delivers covers after covers in steady rhythm. The latest one that comes to our attention is Priscilla Smith's cover Klein bietjie liefde of Nina Åström A little bit , the Finnish entry back in 2000. I'm a fan of the sound of Afrikaans, just love it!