Life after Helsinki 2007 Eurovision

Serbia, one of my favorite Eurovision country usually what comes to the national selections will have its grand final on March 4 after two semi-finals on March 1 and 2. I'm quite sure I won't have time to do the review in between so I do it beforehand exceptionally in Sanremo style. Serbia is riding high again having dared to take a risk last year with Konstrakta and placing 5th in the final in Turin. That certainly wasn't a safe entry and paid off wonderfully. Biti zdrava, biti-biti-biti-biti zdrava! These 32 semi-final songs were selected among the about 200 submissions, among them Eurovision veteran Tijana Dapčević (North Macedonia 2014) and Hurricane  (Serbia 2021) but that doesn't count as all the members have changed. There will be 50/50 jury/televote. Half the songs will reach the final, the other half is eliminated. Mattia Zanatta & Angela Kassiani - Novi svet  * This has a lot going on from Serbian operatic singing to broken English in Italian accent and th...

And so it happened, I predicted 10/10 this time around. Surprised even myself! Otherwise it was a fine show, that went on rather smoothly if you forget some delays in change of stagings especially for Ireland and Malta, and that the sound level in some inserts was rather bad. Nice stage, ok graphics and postcards. Things can only get better for the second semi-final and most importantly for the final. And here they are, the finalists that I guessed all right, did I mention that already? Lithuania got 2nd half in the final Russia got 1st half in the final Sweden got 2nd half in the final Cyprus got 1st half in the final Norway got 2nd half in the final Israel got 1st half in the final Azerbaijan got 2nd half in the final Ukraine got 2nd half in the final Malta got 1st  half in the final Belgium got 1st half in the final

I'm still quite shaken by the death of my biggest musical influences Franco Battiato last night and therefor it feels a bit uneasy to sit down and try to concentrate on guessing the Eurovision song contest 2021 semi-final one qualifiers. Also because this year I have followed very little the rehearsals and have seen only the official short clips and my ideas are based on that very little and maybe much more on the first impression I had when the song was selected or released this spring.  I don't know if it's because of that but this feels harder than ever. For all I know I have 14 songs that could make it really and now looking at that list let's make it 15/16.... Maybe more than ever my personal taste differs from that of fans and odds.  However I would put as sure ones Lithuania, Russia, Sweden, Cyprus, Ukraine and Malta .  Sweden when selected made me think it could win the whole thing again but somehow it doesn't feel that strong anymore. Russia and Cyprus we...