Life after Helsinki 2007 Eurovision

Tonight things go smoothly as fan favourites win here and there. In Romania Mandinga will bring their summer song to Baku 2012. Jury favourite Electric Fence finished second and Catalin Josan third. Zaleilah ! And here's the video, too.  1. Mandinga (jury 10 + televote 12) 22 2. Electric Fence (12 + 7) 19 3. Catalin Josan (8 + 10) 18

The Eurovision national selection season is almost done, can you believe it? Tonight Romania, Moldova, Portugal and Sweden will select their songs and Serbia will unveil it's masterpiece by Zeljko Joksimovic. So it's a full packed evening. All fans have eyes set in Sweden of course but then there's maybe the most antipicated entry of them all, Serbia, coming alive tonight. And ever so succesful Romania with its less succesful but more interesting Moldova. And my personal favourite Portugal, the unlucky child of Eurovision... What to watch and when and how? It's a busy and messy night! And after that we have only one national final left, namely Greece on Monday and then on Wednesday Montenegro will present its song, followed by Bosnis & Herzegovina on Thursday, San Marino on Friday and Belgium on Saturday. And then it's a wrap folks! The speculation and betting may begin full time! Sweden:  Melodifestivalen 20.00 CET. webcast . More info here . Romania:  ...

TVR has put the songs/videos in the Romanian national final online here . True to its usual style there are several songs for the beach parties in summer aka tasteless and smellness anonymous radiopop that is nice to listen as long as it last but is immediately forgotten when the song's over. And of course a banal trinute to Michael Jackson. This said, the selection is not that bad as it I have made it sound :-) Even if all songs are in English. Shame. Review coming up closer to the final on March 6. Razvan Krivach - Jack pott Luminita Anghel, Tony Tomas & Adrian Piper - Save their lives Paula Selig & Ovi - Play with fire Dalma - I'm running Alexandra Ungureanu - Crazy Pasager - Running out of time Lora & Sonny Flame - Come along Hotel FM - Come as one Zero - Lay me down Lucia Dumitrescu - See you in heaven Paula Selig & Kamara - It's not too late Lulu & The Puppets - Searching for perfect emotion Anda Adam & Conect-R - Surrender Tina ...

Elena Gheorghe with The Balcan girls has won the Romanian selection as I predicted. Actually my favourites Blaxy Girls won the televote followed by Elena and Catalin, my other favourite but the jury ranked the girls so low that Elena won. Shame! Here are the televotes and jury votes: Blaxy Girls 4861 = 12, jury 6 = 18 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdNsUt-MOv4 Elena Georghe 3503 =10, jury 12 = 22 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcuZt6hi0II Catalin 2360 = 8, jury 10 = 18 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlnL3gWK_tQ Tina Geru 2328 = 7, jury 1 = 8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nF_NMmlPFxY Dalma 1834 = 6, jury 5 = 11 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMHPkc1KiUs Zero 1322 = 5, jury 7 = 12 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h026NKoR_Hg Tabasco 1293 = 4, jury 8 = 12 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6fK1REfVls Alin Nica 1178 = 3, jury 0 = 3 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbCRguavqFw RedBlonde 878 = 2, jury 2 = 4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qADtgMmkwCY Popas Band 612 = 1, jury 4 = 5 http://www.youtu...

One of the busiest weekends this spring is here. Today we got the semifinals sorted out and the news from Czech Republic. Tomorrow, Saturday we will have 4 semifinals (Lithuania, Slovenia, Iceland and Norway) as well as four finals! UK, Finland, Denmark and Romania will choose their entry, and on Sunday the Netherlands and Slovenia will follow suit making it six new entries at one weekend! No need to ask " Is there anything on telly tonight ?" FINLAND Euroviisut 2009 final at 19.00-21.20 CET ROMANIA Selecţia naţională final at 19:15-22:25 CET UK Your country needs you final at 19:40-20:50 CET NORWAY MGP 2009 2nd semifinal at 19:55-21:05 CET SLOVENIA EMA 2009 semifinal at 19:55-21:40 CET DENMARK Dansk Melodi grand prix 2009 final at 20:00-21:50 CET LITHUANIA Dainų daina 2009 1st semifinal at 20:00-22:00 CET ICELAND Söngvakeppni Sjónvarpsins 4th semifinal at 21:05-22:10 CET

The people in Romania as well as the jury have spoken and here are the finalists for Saturday's final from the 2nd semifinal. This time I got 4-5 out of 6 right and am not at all surprised by IMBA's and Red Blonde's qualification, shame for Irina Popa though. Is it too early to say Elena might get the ticket to Moscow? Costi Ionita - Can you forgive Red Blonde - Nu am cu cine Elena Gheorghe - The Balkan Girls Catalin - Stop Alin Nica - Don't leave IMBA - Round & round

Ok, it's time to have a look at the songs in the second semifinal of Romanian selecţia naţională tomorrow. Six of these will qualify for the Saturday's final. Besa opens this one. She makes me think of Celine Dion for some reason, maybe the color of her voice or the way she pronounces as the song is not up for la Dion's standards, I'm afraid. Red Blond follows with some girlpower I suspect but the only thing that comes across is "Sex! Sex!" or I might be even wrong about that.... Things get a bit better with Adrian Molnar . He's in the same genre with first semis Zero and Tabassco. Pleasant but I guess it will all come down to the performance again. Catalin is one of the favourites I hear and he is mine for sure. I was a bit surprised for the performance though! I hope he won't ruin it all with that. Song's great but the performance is not! Soundcheck provides with their jazzy nightclub number the first candidate for null points in Moscow if sel...

Oh well, I got 3 out of 6 right. Well, almost 4. Anyways my 3 top favourites Blaxy Girls, Popas Band and Zero made it so all's good that ends good. Second Romanian semifinal on Thursday and the final on Saturday. To the final: Popas Band - Striga http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9tNMcK7lis Blaxy Girls - Dear Mama http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpV-Ad-pmoY Zero - Sunny days http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcH8igVTqls Tabasco - Purple http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgLrylhRPbI Dalma - Love was never her friend http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyr6lnQ8-Dw Tina - Pleaca http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biRON_KEF9k

Romania's selecţia naţională kicks off tomorrow and you can see the preview vids here: http://www2.tvr.ro/eurovision/ . I had a go and watched the vids and here are some comments. Unlike last year I don't have an instant favourite and it will be interesting to see what the Romanians like! Zero opens the show with a middle of the road radio friendly pop-rock. The singer is very good and they come across good. Not bad at all. Last year's entrant Nico has teamed up with another national final veteran Moni-K and they offer a very dated, rather boring italodisco number. This might qualify, or then not. In the later case fans will propably shout for a scandal. It is much much better than the next one though. D.D offers a boring rock ballad from the 80's. Romeo Zaharia follows with self penned song that sounds suspiciously familiar? However it's very Melodifestival in all. His strong accent is the main negative thing about it. Next we have Floriana Pachia with a song ...