Life after Helsinki 2007 Eurovision

Lisbon 2018 Eurovision is also a real get together for the last year's artists, on screen at least. Besides the artist from Belarus (who just got a baby btw), Netherlands, Macedonia (who announced her pregnancy and marriage live in thee semi-final last year), Georgia and Norway are all their countries spokespersons, and last year's interval act will provide the Ukrainian ones. Sweden gives the honor as usual to the Melodifestivalen runner up and while John Kennydy O'Connor, Nicky Byrne, Mel Giedroyc and Barbara Schönberger are there as usual (and propably Elodie Gossuin) we won't see Lee Lin Chin. Australia has opted for someone with Portuguese roots, just like Finland and Switzerland.  Just like the running order also the order of voting has been determined by the production team based on the votes of the juries in attempt to make it as exciting as possible.  Ukraine –  Nataliia Zhyzhchenko (Onuka) Azerbaijan-  Tural Asadov Belarus – NAVIBAND (ESC 2017) ...

The mix of the spokespersons is as usual rather interesting; a lot of previous artists, some local pop stars hopefully doing Eurovision one day and some already iconic spokespersons,  For the previous participants we have Yveta Mukuchyan for Armenia, Safura for Azerbaijan, Alyona Lanskaya for Belarus, Juri Pootsman for Estonia, Nika Kocharov for Georgia, Constantinos for Greece, Bo Halldórsson for Iceland (who is also Svala's dad), Nicky Byrne for Ireland, Aminata for Latvia, Andrea Demirovic for Montenegro, Douwe Bob for the Netherlands, Sanja Vucic for Serbia, Zlata Ognivech and Eurovision 1997 winner Katrina Leskanich for the United Kingdom.  Nordic countries prefer to showcase their pop star as Finland has Jenni Vartiainen, Norway Marcus & Martinus and Sweden Wiktoria. Some iconic spokesperson wil reappear again: Lee Lin Chin for Australia, Elodie Gossuin for France, Barbara Schöneberger for Germany, Ofer Nachson for Israel and Peter Poles for Slovenia. Also...

The Sammarinese commentators Lia Fiorio and Gigi Restivo are making history this year by becoming the ones who have commentated the Eurovision song contest in Italian the most times beating all the Italian commentators and the legendary Swiss one, Giovanni Bertini, who did it 21 times from 1961 to 1983. Lia and Gigi has done it 24 times after this year's season is over, or rather all three nights the eight year's San Marino has taken part. And as an icing on the cake they will be also this year's spokespersons for the tiny nation!

The show is set to start at 21 sharp with the parade of the finalists, but with a twist. Belgium takes the stage at 21.11 and we go all the way to Poland, before Måns checks on The Party at Tele2 arena next door at 21.59.  We go on with Australia at 22.01 and after Spain at 22.28 Petra visits the Green room . 22.30 Latvia continues until the last song from Armenia. At 22.57 we get Vicious , before måns and Petra on stage tells about the voting and the first recap goes on air.  23.06 Måns is in the Green room and announces Justin Timberlake next performing Rock your body and Can't stop this feeling . After that, 23.14 Petra has joined Måns in the Green room . Then we are followed with Jonas Åkerlund's short film Best of Sweden celebrating the Swedish music industry, what else? 23.19 Petra and Måns are back on stage and the scoreboard will appear before another recap. Then they have a little chat with Junior Eurovision song contest winner Destiny from Malta....

As always there are quite a few familiar names among the spokespersons. Nina Sublatti (Georgia), Sebalter (Switzerland), Trijntje Oosterhuis (the Netherlands), Uzari (Belarus), Elisabeth Andreasson (Norway), Constantinos (Greece, for some reason), Verka Serduchka (Ukraine) are some of the Eurovision veterans but there are also many familiar faces from national finals like Gina Dirawi (Sweden), Kati Bellowitch (Austria), Ben Camille (Malta). Finland goes for a random tv face, San Marino for a local rapper.  Check out the full list and the order of appearance (like the Olympics, from last year's host to this year's) after the jump....

San Marino has announced its spokesperson for Stockholm. It's Lorenzo Salvatori aka Irol MC, the winner of I talenti dei Castelli 2015, the show that could in theory become the tiny nation's selection show for the Eurovision (maybe). He's no stranger to Eurovision though. In 2014 he was a jury member for Eurovision and in 2015 for the Junior Eurovision. Who knows, maybe he will be on stage someday, ..... We must remember San Marino is treated very unfairly in the new voting system. Not being able to have the televoting they will actually only provide 50% of their votes, while the rest is randomly thrown in by EBU with their own criteria no one seems to know exactly what it is. This detail has also angered SMRTV and time will tell if Stockholm will be their last appearance in the contest. Read more here and here . 

Today's big exciting news turned out to be ... well. exciting? Maybe. Yes. Revolutionary? Nah. In a way it's just adopting the Melodifestivalen (and a few other national selections have used similar way, too, I recall) reults giving system and all in all, I guess it's fine. In short, the juries vote and rank the songs as always. Their votes are given out the usual way with the points given out by national spokespersons. The only difference here is that now on thye will only announce the 12 points (instead of the 8,10 and 12 as before) while the votes from 1 to 10 will appear on scoreboard. For this we can only blame the hundreds of spokespersons over the years who despite strickt rules and time limits preferred this on sceeen time to compliment the hosts how amazing the show was and bla bla bla. When you hear it for the 27th time you want to vomit. Not to mention other nonsense that has been said and done in those precious moments (Sakis tsaziki comes to mind....) An...

If you thought only artists and their teams are nervous and excited on the big night, imagine the spokespersons! There were a lot of nervous giggle and laugher, a lot of hairstyling and make up mixing, someone even double checked her nails. Finland's Krista Siegfrids and Dutch Edsilia Rombley were taking care of their noses with a noisy sneezes while waiting. "It's fun but it's nerve wrecking, Jesus Christ!" the latter exploded at one point. They are there waiting and waiting forever for their 60 seconds or so on screen, and sometimes you don't even get on screen when you are supposed to like happened with Georgia, one of those voting misses in this year's show. Actually there were several connection fails, something that haven't happened for year. Natia Bunturi wasn't amused as you can see below... Technical difficulties also pushed Portugal and Estonia to vote as the last countires instead of their re-scheduled slots. But Estonia's...

Once again many spokespersons are already familiar faces. There are previous Eurovision singers and winners, even previous Eurovision and national final hosts and then well known tv-hosts and hstesses in theirown counties. And then some random celebrities like Ireland's ex-Westlife singer and UK's celebrity tv cook Nigella Lawson. Here they are from Valentina Monetta to Helena Paparizou, from Tinkara Kovac to Andrea Demirovic, Teo, Suzy and Nikki.and more.... and ding dong alert: Krista Siegfrids will burst out with a bubble of laughter and positivity, too!

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. 

It has been known for some time now Valentina Monetta indeed will give out the Sammarinese votes this year in Vienna. She is also joining the delegation and enjoy her fourth consegutive Eurovision on the spot in Vienna.  The rest of the Italian peninsula will rely on Federico Russo who will give out the Italian votes, besides commenting the final for the Italians with another Valentina, Valentina Correani. They are known as presenting The Voice of Italy since season 2.... 

One more exciting thing for Eurovision fans are the spokespersons as every year several previous (and sometimes future) Eurovision entrants re-appear to announce the votes of their country, or previous hosts like this year Alsou for Russia. or she's a double as she also did Eurovision as singer. For Italy it's lovely Federica Gentile, for San Marino John Kennedy O'Connor, a very familiar name for Eurovision freaks. And Finland gives the honor to Kristiina Wheeler, who would be a great entrant herself (What are you waiting for??). Here are the ones this bloggers can pick up with the first look: Armenia - André (ESC 2007) Bulgaria - Joanna Dragneva (ESC 2007) Estonia - Rolf Roosalu (multiple national finalist) Finland - Kristiina Wheeler (singer and future ESC participant?) Germany - Lena (ESC 2010, 2011) Latvia - Anmary (ESC 2012) Norway - Tooji (ESC 2012) Russia - Alsou (ESC 2000 + hostess 2009) Sweden - Yohio (national runner up) Ukraine - Matias (m...