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 collection of thoughts:
* This was the first time I’ve really tried to keep up with (almost) all the selections rather than just picking a few to follow. It was exhausting but rewarding, and I enjoyed learning about how the different processes work and more importantly, the shape of the music scene in all these countries.
* My favourite national finals were Spain, Finland and Australia, while I thought Malta didn’t offer as much as I’d hoped. It was difficult for me to connect to most of the songs from Serbia and Croatia, but it might also have been that these national finals were later in the season, and I was struggling to find enough time to give the songs as much as of a listen as I would have liked.
* I learned some lessons about what to do here: I won’t be returning to the two-songs-per-day review structure. The whole point of that was to keep me writing every day, but once the songs really starting flowing I struggled to keep up and in the end resorted to posting a single review per show, which is what I’ll be doing next year. I’m also aware that my reviews aren’t exactly thrilling stuff, so I’ll be working on a format which will be consistent and hopefully more engaging.
Lastly, these are the songs that stuck with me throughout the national final season. I’ve kept it to my top 15, as there certainly were song beyond this list I liked, but I didn’t keep listening to in the same way as I did with this group.
- Iceland — “Turn This Around” by Daughters of Reykjavik
- Italy — “Ciao Ciao” by La Reppresentante di Lista
- Spain — “Ay Mama” by Rigoberta Bandini
- Australia – “Little Fires” by Jaguar Jonze
- Norway — “Ecstasy” by Eline Noelia
- Spain — “Culpa” by Javiera Mena
- Ukraine — “Girlzzz” by Roxolana
- Australia – “Dreamer” by Voyager
- Lithuania — “Call Me From the Cold” by Rūta Loop
- Finland — “Hurricane” by Cyan Kicks
- Spain — “Eco” by Xeinn
- Estonia — “Little Girl” by Merilin Malk
- Finland — “Ram Pam Pam” by Bess
- Ireland — “One Night, One Kiss, One Promise” by Patrick O’Sullivan
- France – “La Nuit Pauline” by Pauline Chagne
This is the last of my daily blog posts for a few weeks: I’m off to recover some energy before the delegations start arriving in Turin for the rehearsals. I’ll be back in late April. In the meantime, thank you for visiting this fledgling blog, and my apologies for not keeping my overall song rankings as up to date as I would have liked (new update tomorrow). See you towards the end of next month.
Eurovision, Seriously 