You could say that each time Italy hosts, we have a homecoming of sorts. After all, it was the Sanremo Music Festival, established in 1951, that was a template for Eurovision. This then, is the first homecoming, to the city of Naples. Interestingly, it is also the first year that some countries behind the so-called […]

All right, I’m back! With the official-ish start of the Eurovision season a couple of weeks away, and the bidding process for the 2023 host city down to its shortlist stage, it seemed like a good time to return to my reviews of contests past in preparation for next year. This time, I’m reviewing all […]

Sometimes the favourite just wins, right? There had long been a sense that Ukraine were going to be unstoppable this year given the amount of goodwill towards them from across Europe combined with a song strong enough to win votes in its own right, but in the end, it was a record-breaking 431 points from […]

Given that I’ve already reviewed the two semis, I might as well give some brief thoughts on the five countries already in the grand final, in running order. FRANCEThis years folk-electro track is one of the more frantic performances of the evening — it’s more or less the same as the national final, without some […]

Whereas the first semi-final had fans reeling with shock qualifications and therefore non-qualifications, the second semi was far more predictable. In fact, if you took the bookmakers’ odds into account, there was only one act who qualified against expectations. BELGIUM: The first country to go through was immediately one where you could see this was […]

Apologies for the delay, I realise the second rehearsals for this semi finished a few days ago, but I’ve been distracted by other things. Again, this is purely based on the short clips from the official Eurovision YouTube page. FINLANDLots of black balloons with yellow lighting, in keeping with the colour palate The Rasmus used […]

Well, there’s nothing like a few shock qualifications to keep you awake and thinking, even when you sort of want to go back to bed for a nap before the day really begins. Let’s go through all the songs, in order of qualification announcement, and then I’ll think something up for the order of the […]

Please note, even though I am posting these brief thoughts after the jury show, I am basing them entirely on the short, official clips uploaded to YouTube. ALBANIAI find it difficult to say anything definitive here because the clip is from the end of the song, so we’re missing the higher impact of the chorus. […]

For Eurovision 2022, an astonishing 28 of 40 songs were chosen via a national final process rather than by internal selection. I managed to cover 26 of these national selections on this blog, leaving Moldova and San Marino to the side this time. As a closing statement to this part of the Eurovision season, a […]

While Armenia made the Eurovision world wait until the Friday after the delegations met in Turin to release their song, Azerbaijan decided to give themselves the weekend as well, meaning that it was over a week after the national finals ended before we heard “Fade to Black”. This is a tactic various countries have used […]