Life after Helsinki 2007 Eurovision

  San Marino - Jessika feat. Jenifer Brening - Who we are Jessika Muscat (29) has the faith of fellow Maltese Christabelle: several national final attemps and now she gets finally to Eurovision with the worst of them. Or almost. She is joined by German Jenifer Brening (21) who took the original rapper Irol's place when he turned down the song stating it's not his cup of tea. He would have given this at least some Sammarinese touch. Anyways, the innotative Sammarinese national final selection promised a lot but in the end gave us this. I would have chosen differently but what we have is a rather anonymous and heard before anthem against bullying, well sung by Jessika with Jenifer's rap as bonus. Sadly unforgettable and the only thing that might get attention and viewers to remember this are the robots. If they travel to Lisbon, too. What's their deal anyways?! 3/10 Macedonia - Eye Cue - Lost and found Eye Cue is Bojan Trajkovski and Marija Ivanovska...

Italy - Ermal Meta & Fabrizio Moro -  Non mi avete fatto niente Italy sends again the Sanremo winner and their platinum selling #1 manifest against terrorism Non mi avete fatto niente . Albanian born Ermal Meta (37) and Fabrizio Moro (43) both have very succesful and flourishing career already and both have been busy touring and promoting their respective albums after Sanremo skipping all Eurovision related pre-parties - so did Loreen, too, didn't she? I prefer the studio version to the live performance to be honest, when especially Moro goes a bit too shouty for my liking. Despite this one of the strongest songs by far this year with an interesting half spoken verses that turn into light folk rock a la Hop hop somerello , another song with apparent lightness with heavy lyrics. Italy will score another top-10 easily this year. If not, it'd be as unfair as Russia making the final again. Italy could also be fighting for victory in case the jury and televotes sp...

YLE has revealed details about its Eurovision 2015 broadcast. First of all Krista Siegfrids will join Valentina Monetta and others as spokesperson and will give out the Finnish votes. The Finnish jury is made of UMK judge, musician and pedagog Aija Puurtinen, radio morning show speaker Laura Haimila, producer-composr Jukka Immonen, lyricist-musician Jukka Eronen aka Aikuinen from UMK 2015 and producer-musician Mikko Pykäri. The commentators will be two huge Eurovision fans and radio/tv personalities Aino Töllinen and Cristal Snow, who aso took part in the 2008 national final placing third with Can't save me . YLE's Swedish speaking commentators will be Eva Frantz and Johan Lindroos.  YLE will broadcast all three shows as always and on Saturday May 16th will have a four hour long marathon preview show with various commentators, including Cristal Snow. 

#UMK15 kicks off officially tonight at 19.40 CET when the two hour long preview megamarathon will be aired. The videos of each song have been showed the past two weeks on YLE2 between here and there, the songs have been played on radio and many of them have been included on various radio stations playlists and some of them have even iCharted. Tonight they will be judged by a panel that is made of Cristal Snow, Toni Wirtanen, Hanna-Riikka Siitonen and Iisa and the whole is hosted by Aino Töllinen. Next Saturday the serious business starts..... (It should be also viewable abroad here ) UPDATE: Here are the results: Shava - Ostarilla (35 points) "Original, real joy of doing their thing. Don't turn into a joke!" Pertti Kurikan Nimipäivät (34 points) "Autenthic. Real. Touching" Satin Circus (31 points) "Works. real pop song. Video helps it" Pihka ja Myrsky (29 points) "Very good, but is it for Eurovision?" Vilikasper Kanth...

YLE will obviously broadcast all the three shows live on YLE2 as well as YLE HD on May 22, 24 and 26. Besides that the preview show will be on May 12. (Only one show? What happened to the rule that one couldn't show them in one show?) Anyways, May 12 on YLE2 from 19.30-21.50 all the Eurovision 2012 entries are presented. I don't know how and by whom but that will be the date... YLE Fem, the newly named Swedish speaking channel of YLE will go for the more traditional approach. There will be four shows (April 17, 24 and May 1,8 at 20.00) with commentary by Eurovision genius Tobias Larsson with Eva Frantz and Johan LIndroos. Each show will feature a guest commentator: Axel Ehnström aka Paradise Oskar in the first one, then Krista Siegfrieds, Ronya and Tommy Nordlund in the last one. The commentators will give votes to each song, pretty much like the well proven Swedish format for the previews. 

Once again YLE will be showing a lot of Eurovision madness on its channel 2 in May. We kick of with the previews on April 29 for the three Thursday nights. Eurovision Countdown shows will be broadcasted again as well, starting from May 15. YLE's own Haloo Oslo updates will start May 17 and go on until May 27. Most programmes will have one or two reruns. Here is the full schedule: 29.4 PREVIEWS part 1 19.50-20.40 1.5 rerun previews part 1 11.15-12.05 6.5. PREVIEWS part 2 19.50-20.40 8.5 rerun previews part 2 10.25-11.15 13.5. PREVIEWS part 3 19.50-20.49 15.5. rerun previews part 3 10.24-11.15 15.5 EUROVISION COUNTDOWN 1 20.25-20.55 17.5. HALOO OSLO 1 20.50-20.55 18.5 rerun Haloo Oslo 1 12.40-12.45 18.5. rerun Eurovision countdown 1 14.35-15.00 19.5 HALOO OSLO 2 20.50-20.55 20.5. EUROVISION COUNTDOWN 2 20.20-20.50 20.5 HALOO OSLO 3 20.50-20.55 21.5 rerun Haloo Oslo 2 14.15-14.20 21.5 rerun Haloo Oslo 3 14.20-14.25 21.5. rerun Eurovision countdown 2 14.30-15.00 22.5 rerun Haloo O...