Life after Helsinki 2007 Eurovision

    So, here they are all together but let's have a look how I voted and felt that moment I did the ranking, if there are some adjustments to do. I gave a total of four 10s: Italy, Norway, Lithuania and Croatia and five 9s: Israel, Ukraine, Australia, United Kingdom and France The first semi-final is clearly better in my ranking and in fact and in fact 5-6 first semi entries drop out to make way to three second semi ones, if I take only the top-10 from each semi-final to the final... Poor Azerbaijan, North Macedonia, Malta, Belgium, Sweden and Ireland and lucky Portugal, Austria and Armenia who would qualify over them. But then again, there would have been changes during this week based on rehearsals and the live shows, last night's Youtube celebration already made me do some adjustments.... Check out the individual reviews below and the full ranking after the jump Finland Ukraine, Lithuania, Russia, Iceland Netherlands, Denmark, Ireland, Georgia S...

Moldova - Natalia Gordienko - Prison One of those songs that are just "nice" in every way: melody, idea, vocals... but being so anonymous it leaves you nothing and even after several hearings you really don't remember a thing about. Except the overproduced over the top beats and arrangements. 3/10 Slovenia - Ana Soklič - Voda This is the complete opposite of Moldova. I liked it from the first hearing but then it has just grown and become better! Ana has proved the past months she's one of the best, if not the best, vocalist this year. The song is beautiful and she sings it with style and gusto. And for once the new version is better than the original mix. Could have been maybe a surprise success in Rotterdam, who knows? 8/10 Poland - Alicja - Empires This song's a problem for me. I'd like to like it a lot more than I do in the end. Alicja does a great job for her age, the song is melodic and boombastic without becoming a cliché. But someh...

Let's continue the series and kill some time having a look at the last decade and see who were the Top-10 best scoring countries in the Eurovision song contest in the past ten years. The ways to calculate are many and here I have used the simple average placement method (and it's not all so serious). Next up is Norway at n.o 7. Norway has been sending a steady string of successes after a rocky start of the decade that started with a NQ and then a last place in the final.. Those who didn't qualify were fan favorites no matter what, and this blogger thinks Agnete's NQ was very much undeserved. Five top-10 finishes ending with a televoters winner in 2019  is a great result no matter how you look at it.  2011 Stella Mwangi - Haba haba - NQ (17th in semi-final) ** 2012 Tooji - Stay - 26th *** 2013 Margaret Berger - I feed you my love - 4th **** 2014 Carl Espen - Silent storm - 8th ***** 2015 Mørland & Debrah Scarlett - A monster like me - 8th ***...

Ulrikke Brandstorp (24) is a singer, songwriter and musical actress. She's one of those seeking for notoriety in various talent shows having done Idols (2013), The Voice (2015) and Stjernekamp (2018). In 2019 she starred in The Sound of Music in Oslo. She's also wellknown from various television productions in Norway. The 2020 MGP was her second after placing fourth in 2017 with Places . She has no album released yet but Attention is her eighth single already.  After the cancellation of Eurovision 2020 NRK apparently offered her a spot in the MGP 2021 line up but so far she has declined the offer for the time being. This blogger thinks Attention was one of the strongest contenders for the trophy in Rotterdam....

  If I couldn't care less about the Armenian winner the other two national finals in Norway and Lithuania ended with my favorites winning. All didn't go as planned in Norway what comes to voting. The online only voting experience ended with a total crash of the system and a jury of 30 had to pick up the top-4 gold finalists instead. That has caused quite a stir when artists and their managers and media in general has attacked NRK as they say they were never informed on the Plan B existing. The 30 random tv-viewers based on age and region were also not voting based on the live show but the studio versions of the songs.... Oh my. NRK however says there will be no other voting. Ulrikke, one of the main pre-final favorites won and that's it. Off to Rotterdam! Ulrikke (24) is no stranger to MGP having placed 4th in 2017 and became a superfavorite (also mine) after her stellar live performance in the 4th semi-final. Her song is co-written by Kjetil Mørland of ESC 2015 f...