Life after Helsinki 2007 Eurovision

What would the national selection season be without a review by Peter Clancy, already a Blogilkar tradition! He reviews the songs in the Finnish national selection #UMK2016. First semifinals, then the final once the finalists are out and later on this spring also the Eurovision song contest entries as well. Hopefully! Here is the Semifinal one of #UMK2016. Enjoy! Saara Aalto - No Fear I love the opening, and like Saara's voice. Very warm. There's a nice buildup to some kind of neo-Chinese type music, the flow is continually broken though and unfortunately it doesn't do it for me. In the middle I had hope that something would change, but unfortunately it lead nowhere and ends nowhere (points: 3 out of 5 ) qualifies Mikko Herranen - Evil Tone Don't get the point of the driving given that he's blind .. Go figure … I don't particularily like his voice and the lyrics are a bit haphazzard - almost a mistake. This could be characterised by being one bi...

So here we are again, another year, another Eurovision. After listening to all the songs a couple of times, trying to imagine the live performance and taking into account the style etc., I have come up with my top 40 in reverse order below. It’s great to see Australia compete, I’m really looking forward to being in the hall when Guy comes on stage, it will be a great moment. While I have rarely managed to predict the winner, I think I’ll have the top 5 more or less right this year. Time will tell, only a couple of weeks to go:

It's already a tradition of this blog that Peter Clancy comes up with a review of the season's offering and this year's no exception. Enjoy! Well, we’re back to Eurovision time again and to be honest this year’s crop of entries is quite disappointing which is not so bad because it is likely to make the voting very erratic and with votes going everywhere we could have an unexpected winner...  My prediction is that the initial voting will have all kinds of changes in the leader board. This year I am reviewing the songs in order of my ranking – from the worst to the best in my opinion. the Q is that they will qualify; nq is they will not qualify and F is they're already in the final  Moldova (Wild Soul; Christina Scarlat) : Trying to be a better song than it is, though it has a nice build up ... still a boring song. (will not qualify (nq); rank-37) Belarus Cheescake; Teo) : Boring, an excuse to enter a song - won't do well ! Too jazzy (nq; rank-36)   ...

Irish Peter, who lives in Belgium and is a member of OGAE Sweden is at it again. Here is what he thinks about the 2012 edition of the Eurovision song contest and who will win. ... Well, the Eurovision circus has managed to find its way to Azerbaijan and it looks like they are pulling out the stops to make this one of the best ever. Unfortunately I don't think the quality of the songs is great this year which could lead to a few surprises. Here is an overview of my thoughts on the selection.  In my overview an "(F)" indicates that I think they will get to the final. Montenegro - It was hard to know if I was listening to the opening of a new version of "phantom of the opera" ... I have only two words for Amadeus - "why bother?" - It’s not even worth more comment. [Score: 0/10] Iceland - Good dramatic opening, great drumbeat, the only difficulty with this is twofold - a lot of ballads and it's a bit repetitive - but a definite for the ...

It's time of the year when I feature guest reviews and here comes the first one, already a tradition in this blog: Peter Clancy!Here goes: Well it looks like the the Finninsh lineup is pretty decent this year - there are some quite nice songs, and I'm really interested to see what song will actually represent Finland in Düsseldorf.... Automatic Eye - I'm not the one who's sorry o Nice quick opening, not sure about the lyrics, but a good beat and could appeal a lot to a younger generation (which had a major impact on the voting last year). My only concern here is sometimes there seems to be a missing beat ... and seems to go on and on... a bit repetitive ... not my favourite, but will probably progress beyond round 1. Points: 8/10 Johanna Iivanainen - Luojani mun o Ah, a lovely ballad, nice voice and a bit anthemy - but with a twist. Don't know what it means but I like it ... not sure it will win Eurovision, but is certainly a very nice song and would do...