Eurovision

Now that this year’s Eurovision contest is officially over, I have some final reflections on tracking the competition for the past month.

First, I’m pretty appalled by how much money gets spent on this contest. I know the contest is a hugely popular long-running tradition in Europe and the host countries have a lot of pressure to provide an entertaining show, but it is incredible how much money must get put into this elaborate production. Between the enormous stage with the huge amount of lighting displays to the props, costumes, and those digitalized Russian nesting dolls, all of which will most likely never be used again, to the amount that must have been spent on security and organizers, it’s insane how expensive it must be to put this together. In this article from the Moscow Times, an estimated 24 million euros ($32.3 million) was spent by Russia to host the production. I’m sure some of that was earned back between tourist revenue and ticket sales. From the tickets section of the Eurovision website, tickets for the dress rehearsals cost from 7-40 euros (approximately $9-$54), tickets for the semi-finals cost 18-445 euros (approximately $24-$600), and tickets for the final cost 22-667 euros (approximately $30-$900). That’s ridiculous, especially considering the economic state of many of the participating countries. I’m disappointed that so much money goes into a contest that doesn’t even feature generally good music.

Secondly, I’m still fascinated by how political this contest is and how seriously Europeans take it. Watching how countries voted was just a continuation of seeing how politics is infused into this competition. Depending on which country was being presented, it was relatively easy to predict to whom they were going to award their top scores. Even though the incorporation of jury voting was in attempts to break up the traditional voting blocks, overall countries with positive political and cultural affiliations still tended to vote for each other. Likewise, countries with negative affiliations tended not to vote for each other. While this makes a lot of sense, it’s still interesting to take note of, especially with the contest being one between pop songs.

Third, I still find it really interesting how countries choose to represent themselves in terms of music and performers. Many of the entries were pretty much mediocre europop songs with English lyrics, some of which had no noticeable cultural or musical ties to the country they were representing. Granted, it is a hard balance to reach, to come up with a song that is appealing to a wide audience that is still representative of a country’s music. However, it’s unfortunate that the strategy taken up by many countries is to ignore cultural ties and to just go with a flashy song that could be from anywhere, just to win. While it’s understandable that this has become the trend and that countries do this in hopes of winning, it’s disappointing from an ethnomusicological stand point because it would be a much more interesting contest if Eurovision was more of a display of the different kinds of music all over Europe. To be fair, some countries do make valiant efforts to incorporate folkloric elements into their entries to give them ties to the country, though I still think it would be interesting to see what the contest would be like if the focus was more on submitting good musical acts to show the variety of culture in Europe.

Overall, I had a real love/hate relationship with this contest. Having never been that invested in the contest, I had never given Eurovision that much attention until this year with the class project. At first I was really fascinated and entertained by it, enjoying how ridiculous it is. However, after watching the semi-finals and finals I was also really put off by the extravagance of the production and plethora of bad music. I admit that I enjoyed watching the final rounds of performances because it is so unbelievable and over the top, though stepping back from it, I really can’t believe how much goes into each entry, not to mention the overall contest. While I’m not sure if I’ll be keeping up on future Eurovision contests, I do think it will be interesting to see how the contest develops. I wonder if entries will become even more homogenized, or if countries will start to sway from formulaic entries in favor of more musically representative entries. I also wonder how future entries can even start to top the extravagance of this year’s contest (though I’m sure they will inevitably will). I’m sure in another 50 years the contest will have changed considerably, just as it’s changed over the last 50 years, though it’ll be interesting to see what kinds of changes those will be.

The overall reaction to the 2009 Eurovision contest across Europe has been positive, especially in terms of how smoothly the show ran and how the scores were presented. I guess in past years the contest has been much longer, so the general public appreciated a relatively quicker show.

Alexander Rybak’s “Fairytale” was also tremendously popular all over Europe, and not just in Scandinavia. The performance received at least two points from every voting country, with 16 12-point scores, 9 10-point scores, and 10 8-point scores. With 387 total points, the entry has set a new record with its landslide victory. The general consensus on the message boards I’ve seen has been that his voice was not the strongest in the contest (I agree), though he had the best overall performance. Rybak is going to make a tremendous amount of money off of this song, as he not only performed it, but wrote it as well. It’ll be interesting to see in the next few weeks how popular the song becomes all over Europe. I wonder if it’ll be a hit at all over here in the United States. I could be wrong, but my gut reaction to the song is that it won’t have much commercial success outside of Europe.

Norway’s reaction has been pretty tremendous. Not only are they celebrating their Eurovision win, but today, May 17, is their independence day, so they are also celebrating that on top of Eurovision. Apparently there has been much parting and dancing in the streets both last night and today.

Rybak’s reaction to the win has been hilarious. After kind of freaking out on stage before his winning reprisal performance, he has been quoted as saying that he thinks he won Eurovision because he “had a story to tell”. He also said he thought his performance was strong, which in my opinion was more the reason he won.

Other performers’ reactions were mixed. The performers from Azerbaijan, for example, are thrilled by their third place finish. Others, like Greek performer Sakis Rouvas was a little disappointed by his placement. Overall, most performers have said it was a good experience and that they enjoyed participating.

The only major frustrations that I’ve seen people voice on message boards about this year’s contest was the voting. Many people have been angry about the 50/50 split between televote and jury vote that decided each country’s votes. Additionally, since the jury vote was just included with the televote in the score presentations, people are wondering how much the jury affected the outcome of the contest. I have a feeling that they didn’t affect Norway’s win, however, I’m sure the other placements would have been different if it was done completely by televoting. A lot of people want to see the numbers in how the juries voted compared to the televotes; however, if these numbers were published, I’m sure the backlash from the general public would be strong if the outcome was significantly swayed by the juries.

There have been some other controversies surrounding this year’s contest. First, May 17 in addition to bein Norway’s independence day is also apparently the International Day Against Homophobia. Many gay rights activists wanted to hold a gay pride parade in Moscow, but since it was so close to the Eurovision contest, Moscow mayor Yury Luzhkov did not permit the parade to happen, most likely for fear of bad press from the hoards of publicity in the city for Eurovision. As a result, there were protesters outside of the Eurovision event, 20 of which were arrested. The other noteworthy controversy was between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Images of Karabakh, a disputed area between the two countries, were shown in relation to Armenia. Additionally, the number for Azerbaijan to use to vote for Armenia was apparently censored from the country’s broadcast to prevent people from voting for Armenia’s entry. This is just another example of how politics gets intertwined into this “song” contest.

Sources:

http://www.esctoday.com/news/read/14075
http://www.eurovision.tv/page/news?id=2709
http://www.eurovision.tv/page/news?id=2652
http://www.eurovision.tv/page/news?id=2786
http://www.esctoday.com/news/read/14086
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurovision_Song_Contest_2009

Now that Norway’s win is official, and not just a strong prediction, I thought it’d be interesting to compare the performance to Raykoff and Tobin’s winning song formula.

Alexander Rybak, “Fairytale”

1. Fast pace and catchy rhythms

“Fairytale” is certainly an upbeat and catchy song. While I don’t think there’s a rhythmic hook, per se, there is certainly a melodic hook that Rybak plays on the fiddle.

2. Memorable and repetitive lyrics

The song has a chorus that is sung several times, which I think are the only real memorable and repetitive lyrics. After hearing the song just once I think I could sing along to the chorus, at least the first couple lines.

3. Harmonically and dynamically contrasting chorus

Musically, the verses and choruses aren’t drastically different from each other; however, dynamically they contrast. The chorus is much louder than the verses and much more dramatic.

4. Key change

Towards the end of the song, there is most definitely a key change.

5. Clearly defined finish

The song has a clearly defined finish; once Rybak finishes singing, he plays the little fiddle riff a few times while dancing around with the other dancers. Once the song ends, everyone freezes to emphasize the song has ended.

6. Appealing dance routine

Even when I was getting sick of hearing the song so much, the dancing still remained exciting–the dancers in this performance were certainly talented and entertaining.

7. Costumes

This performance didn’t have elaborate costumes like some of the other performances. Rybak matched the dancers and the backup singers were wearing identical dresses, but the outfits weren’t really that amazing.

Overall, “Fairytale” pretty much goes along with the song formula, though not as strongly as some other entries. For almost every point, it seemed like an argument could be made for how the song adhered to it, but not many were obvious points that the song had. I think if the contest had been solely based off of how closely entries could adhere to this formula, the winner might have been Moldova, whose performance I think more closely adhered to this formula. However, since that entry wasn’t in English and was much more based in folk music and dance, I don’t think it did as well. It’s noteworthy to mention that Rybak’s song was also had a folk music and dance influence, but the song was in English, so it was more accessible to a wider audience, plus the flashy dancing and fiddle playing added to the song’s appeal as well.

It is also interesting to compare the second place entry from Iceland to this formula–I think that performance followed even fewer of these points, as it was a slow ballad with hardly anything memorable, aside from the giant soaring dolphin in the video behind the performers.

Source:

Raykoff, Ivan, and Robert Deam Tobin. 2007. “Introduction.”A Song for Europe: Popular Music and Politics in the Eurovision Song Contest. Burlinton, VT: Ashgate. xix.

Now that the results from the final have been announced, the scores from the semi-finals have been revealed.

Here is the order of how the first semi-final acts placed. The ones in bold moved on to the final round (the top 9, plus the one jury pick):

1. Iceland
2. Turkey
3. Bosnia and Herzegovina
4. Sweden
5. Armenia
6. Malta
7. Israel
8. Portugal
9. Romania
10. Macedonia
11. Montenegro
12. Finland
13. Belarus
14. Switzerland
15. Andorra
16. Bulgaria
17. Belgium
18. Czech Republic

Here’s the order of how the second semi-final acts placed:

1. Norway
2. Azerbaijan
3. Estonia
4. Greece
5. Moldova
6. Ukraine
7. Albania
8. Denmark
9. Lithuania
10. Serbia
11. Ireland
12. Poland
13. Croatia
14. Cyprus
15. Hungary
16. Slovenia
17. Netherlands
18. Slovakia
19. Latvia

Here’s how the placement would have been if the points from the semi-finals had determined the winners (note that France, the United Kingdom, Spain, Germany, and Russia did not have to participate in the semi-finals, so I left them out of this, because using their final votes would have skewed these numbers. In bold are the countries that progressed to the finals; the ones with asterisks were the jury votes):

1. Norway
2. Azerbaijan
3. Iceland
4. Turkey
5. Bosnia and Herzegovina
6. Estonia
7. Greece
8. Moldova
9. Sweden
10. Armenia
11. Malta
12. Ukraine
13. Israel
14. Albania
15. Portugal
16. Denmark
17. Romania
18. Lithuania
19. Serbia
20. Ireland
21. Macedonia
22. Montenegro
23. Poland
24. Finland*
25. Croatia*
26. Cyprus
27. Belarus
28. Hungary
29. Switzerland
30. Slovenia
31. Netherlands
32. Slovakia (tie for 32nd)
32. Andorra (tie for 32nd)
34. Latvia (tie for 34th)
34. Bulgaria (tie for 34th)
36. Belgium
37. Czech Republic

The semi-final results (which are not counting the “Big Four” and host countries) are pretty close to what the final results ended up being; perhaps this is why these results are only published after the final contest, as to make the final more exciting. The top four are the same, though places 2 and 3 were switched in the final. Bosnia and Herzegovina scored surprisingly high in the semi-finals, probably more from sympathy votes than votes for the actual performance.

Also, it is interesting knowing which entries were the jury’s picks, and which were the general public’s picks. Granted, the jury picks were the highest-placing jury-vote entry that did not qualify from the televoting. Still, I’m wondering what the jury saw in Finland’s act that they didn’t see in, say, Switzerland’s.

Overall it’s interesting to see which entries were not popular at all. The Czech entry (with the orange jumpsuit and SuperGipsy) received zero points, Belgium’s Elvis impersonator received just one point; Bulgaria’s awful performance did well comparatively with a grand total of seven points from the semi-final.

Source:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurovision_Song_Contest_2009

Today I watched the final of the 2009 Eurovision Song Contest, streamed live from the Oberlin language lab! This was an enormous performance, as expected. Even with with the quick changes between songs and relatively fast score announcements, the show clocked in at around three hours and 15 minutes.

The show began with a performance by Cirque du Soleil, which morphed into Eurovision 2008’s winner Dima Bilan singing last year’s winning song “Believe”. Lithuania was the first entry to take the stage, giving the contest a sort of somber start. Next came Israel, with a decent performance, followed by an intense solo French performance. Fourth came Sweden with the strongest vocals of the competition thus far, though I continued to dislike the song. Next was Croatia with perhaps the most improved performance over the duration of the competition, though it still pretty mediocre. Portugal was sixth with an overall strong performance. Iceland followed with a strong vocal performance, and then came the high-energy Greek entry. Ninth was Armenia with an upbeat, strong show, which was contrasted by the intense and depressing Russian entry. Eleventh was Azerbaijan, with surprisingly decent vocals compared to previous live performances, which was followed by the mediocre song from Bosnia and Herzegovina. Moldova offered a highly energetic performance to close out the first half of the contest.

Malta continued into the second half of performances with a strong vocal performance of an otherwise boring entry. Estonia, while musically strong, did not offer as flashy a performance as previous entries, which made it less appealing to the general audience. Denmark was sixteenth, with an enthusiastic, if weak, vocal performance. If the contest had solely been based off of how tight the pants of the lead singer were, Germany would certainly have won, though since the overall performance lacked energy, it didn’t end up being one of the stronger performances, as expected. Turkey followed with an overall strong performance, followed by Albania’s entry, which was just as weird and creepy as the semi-final performance. Norway performed twentieth, also with an overall strong performance. Ukraine’s performance was once again just out of control and ridiculous, though it was probably the most elaborate and entertaining of the show. Romania followed with a mediocre performance, followed by the United Kingdom with an overall strong vocal performance and cameo by Anderw Lloyd Weber on piano. Finland was second to last with an energetic performance packed with fire, though the song was just as awful as ever. Spain concluded the performances with a decent, engertic performance.

Following all the performances, Europe at large was given 15 minutes to vote. During this time, multiple recaps of the show were broadcast–the first few performances seemed so distant by the end of the show and with so many entries, it was hard to keep track of all of them. My favorites of the night were Amenia, Moldova, Estonia, and Portugal, with my continued love/hate relationship with the Ukrainian entry.

Once the voting period was over and as the scores were tallied, Cirque du Soliel offered another performance, though this one was really strange, involving people dancing around in water. After about 10 minutes of this, the votes started coming in. Each country had a representative announce the country’s results, which were added to the score board as the results came in. Given that there were 42 countries voting, this process took a little while to get through. Pretty early on Norway took a large point lead, though the other top spots were much closer. Once all of the countries’ results were announced the final placement was confirmed:

1. Norway
2. Iceland
3. Azerbaijan
4. Turkey
5. United Kingdom
6. Estonia
7. Greece
8. France
9. Bosnia and Herzegovina
10. Armenia
11. Russia
12. Ukraine
13. Denmark
14. Moldova
15. Portugal
16. Israel
17. Albania
18. Croatia
19. Romania
20. Germany
21. Sweden
22. Malta
23. Lithuania
24. Spain
25. Finland

Considering it’s currently the middle of the night in Europe, I’m going to wait to read about reactions to the contest until tomorrow, by which time I’m sure there will be a bunch of news articles and message board posts about the results. I was surprised a little by the results; Turkey and Greece didn’t do as well as expected, and Bosnia and Herzegovina made it into the top 10. I wonder how the new jury vote contribution to each country’s results affected the voting. The juries had a lot of influence on their country’s votes, and I think if it was done again solely by televoting, the results would have been much different (for example, Turkey probably would have placed 2nd and Greece 3rd). I also think some of the stronger entries from the first half of the show would have placed better if they had performed later in the contest–I think the general audience had pretty much fogotten entries like Lithuania and Sweden by the time the Spain was performing.

Tomorrow I’ll make one or two final posts about Europe’s reactions, as well as some final thoughts of my own after tracking this contest for the past month.

The 2009 Eurovision Song Contest is almost over–tomorrow, Saturday, May 16 is the final round of the contest. The voting system has been changed for this year; televoting will make up half of a country’s vote, while the other half will be decided by jury vote. This system was put into place to counter the voting blocks, in hopes of making the contest more fair.

The order of the performances tomorrow is:

1. Lithuania
2. Israel
3. France
4. Sweden
5. Croatia
6. Portugal
7. Iceland
8. Greece
9. Armenia
10. Russia
11. Azerbaijan
12. Bosnia and Herzegovina
13. Moldova
14. Malta
15. Estonia
16. Denmark
17. Germany
18. Turkey
19. Albania
20. Norway
21. Ukraine
22. Romania
23. United Kingdom
24. Finland
25. Spain

Here are a few predictions from other websites:

• esctoday.com’s “Big Poll” is predicting Azerbaijan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, France, Greece, Iceland, Norway, Turkey, Ukraine, or the United Kingdom.
• coral.co.uk is predicting Norway to win, followed by Greece, then Turkey
• google.com’s “predictor gadget” is currently predicting Turkey to win, followed by Norway, then Greece

Personally, I think the winner is going to be either Norway or Turkey. I think the rest of the top 10 will be made up of (in no particular order) Lithuania, the United Kingdom, Greece, Armenia, Germany, France, Iceland, and Spain. I think the losers of this round are going to be Finland, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Denmark.

Going into the final round, my personal favorites are Armenia and Estonia. However, I don’t think either of them have enough hype to win the contest. Though, perhaps they’ll end up doing well if they’re received well from the juries. My least favorites of the final 25 are Romania, Finland, and Ukraine.

In terms of overall contest losers, I’m predicting Bulgaria, the Netherlands, and Belgium to be in the bottom three. How I understand it (this might be wrong), the scores from the semi-finals will be revealed at the finals (or shortly thereafter), and from that, the losing entries of this year’s contest can be determined.

Sources:

http://www.eurovision.tv/page/moscow2009/the-participants/final
http://www.esctoday.com/news/read/14066
http://www.coral.co.uk/sbuk.go?page=supergrouppage&sportid=31&supergroup=..Eurovision%20Song%20Contest%202009〈=20&sid=20&ms=&affId=1308849
http://www.google.com/landing/eurovision/index.html

Last night, I watched the second semi-final round for this year’s Eurovision contest, streamed from the official Eurovision website. I’m not sure if I was just me, but overall this round seemed a lot weaker, with mediocre vocals that made me think I was watching bad karaoke, rather than an international song competition.

This round’s opening performance was even stranger than the first round’s opening; a whole bunch of folk dancers danced around some enormous, computerized Russian nesting dolls, which changed as the dancers changed. The dancing concluded with a whole bunch of people in bear costumes, followed by the introduction of the evening’s hosts, once again supermodel Natalya Vodyanova and TV host Andrey Malakhov.

The first performance was from Croatia, which featured decent singers, though the overall performance was kind of a boring opening to the contest (especially after the dancing bears). Following Croatia was Ireland with an upbeat performance straight out of the 1980s. Though the lead singer was alright, the harmonies were very weak. Next was the Latvian entry, which had a high energy level, but between the abrasive song and poor vocals, it was an awkward performance. The Serbian entry continued with a performance that was all over the place, complete with dancing accordionist and ballet dancer. Though it was a catchy song, the lead vocals were raspy and weak. Poland was next with a decent song and vocals, but the singer’s obvious Polish accent just made the delivery awkward; it probably would have been much stronger if she had sung in Polish. To conclude the first third of the show, Eurovision favorite Alexander Rybak performed for Norway with a high energy, comparatively strong performance, with a lot of impressive, physical dancing.

After the Norwegian entry came a video featuring past Eurovision winners. They mainly talked about the changes they noticed in this year’s contest and what they’ve been doing ever since winning the contest. Follow the video, Cyprus continued the competition with a cheesy song with nervous vocals (though it wasn’t as bad as I expected it to be). Slovakia’s entry followed and would have had a pretty strong performance had the female singer not tried hitting such high notes towards the end. Denmark was up next with an overall pretty good performance, though the vocals weren’t the strongest I’ve head in the competition. Slovenia’s performance was mainly ruined because of the repetitive song, though the vocalist didn’t help. I thought Hungary’s performance was one of the worst of the night, between the poor vocals and sexual dancing. Next came Azerbaijan, and though the vocals weren’t the strongest, they had a relatively strong, flashy performance. Next came Greece’s entry, the best part of which was the motorized, rising walkway. Following this was Lithuania, which gave the strongest vocal performance thus far (though that’s not saying all that much). I liked the addition of a Lithuanian verse at the end of the song. Moldova offered a really high-energy performance with relatively strong vocals and lots of costumes. Following this was Albania with another relatively strong vocal performance, but with pretty creepy costumes, straight out of a comic book, on the backup dancers. Ukraine’s performance might have been the most ridiculous and elaborate of the evening; between the sexual costumes and dancing, mediocre vocals, awful song, and drum solo, I was just left confused. However, it certainly had a lot of energy and infectious beat. Estonia followed Ukraine with a much mellower performance. I thought this song was one of the best of the night, and even though the performance wasn’t as flashy as some of the others, it was solid and had good vocals. Finishing off the evening was the Netherlands with a song that might only win the Eurovision title of being the cheesiest entry. Between the middle-aged men in sparkly suits with mediocre voices, the awful song, and the over-the-top backup dancers, it was a pretty silly ending to a fairly weak round.

Once again, Europe was given a time limit in which to vote, accompanied by a recap of the evening. If I were voting, here’s how I would have ranked the performances using the Eurovision scoring system (12, 10, 8-1):

12: Estonia
10: Lithuania
8: Norway
7: Moldova
6: Albania
5: Azerbaijan
4: Croatia
3: Greece
2: Serbia
1: Ukraine. Just because.

Once the voting was over, there was a large folk dance interlude while the votes were tallied. Once this performance ended, the 10 countries that were moving on to the final round were announced (in random order): Azerbaijan, Croatia, Ukraine, Lithuania, Albania, Moldova, Denmark, Estonia, Norway, and Greece. This of course means that Ireland, Latvia, Serbia, Poland, Cyprus, Slovakia, Slovenia, Hungary, and the Netherlands were out. Just one of the 10 that I would have voted for failed to make the finals, and it’s not one of the ones I was felt strongly about, so overall I was not surprised by the results of this round.

A controversy that arose over this round was in Spain’s broadcast. Apparently, Spain’s broadcaster TVE didn’t broadcast the contest live, which prevented the Spanish general public from voting in this round. Spain had a backup jury to vote in case technical difficulties arose; that jury voted for Spain in this semi-final. The European Broadcasting Union might be penalizing Spain in some way because of this. The penalty will be decided on after the final round, as to not affect the competition.

With the conclusion of this round, all of the finalists have been selected and will compete on Saturday to determine the winner of this year’s contest.

The second semi-final round for the 2009 Eurovision contest takes place tomorrow, Thursday, May 14, 2009. The order of the performances is as follows:

1. Croatia
2. Ireland
3. Latvia
4. Serbia
5. Poland
6. Norway
7. Cyprus
8. Slovakia
9. Denmark
10. Slovenia
11. Hungary
12. Azerbaijan
13. Greece
14. Lithuania
15. Moldova
16. Albania
17. Ukraine
18. Estonia
19. The Netherlands

From these 19 countries, 10 will move on to the final round: 9 by televote, and 1 by the jury. In addition to these 19 countries, host country Russia and the other two members of the “Big Four”, France and Spain, will be voting in this semi-final (all three have already qualified for the final). Personally, I think the 10 to progress will be (in no particular order): Norway, Greece, Estonia, Lithuania, Moldova, Albania, Poland, Serbia, Hungary, and Azerbaijan.

Once I get a chance to watch the 2nd semi-final tomorrow, I’ll post a summary and reactions.

Sources:

http://www.eurovision.tv/page/moscow2009/the-participants/semifinal2
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurovision_Song_Contest_2009

I found this while searching for Eurovision-related websites: Google made a Eurovision “Predictor gadget“, which bases its predictions on how popular certain contestants are in Google search data. It’ll be interesting to see how close Google gets to the final results.

I just finished watching the first semi-final round for this year’s Eurovision contest, streamed from the official Eurovision website. This was my first time watching a full round of performances, rather than just individual entries. My first reaction was amazement in how large a production this is–Russia has really gone all out hosting this year.

The performance opened with a sort of fantasy fairy tale, in which the junior Eurovision winners from 2006 entered by flying mechanical “dragon” to help introduce the contest. The story ended with some cheesy line about how songs give people wings, at which point the audience was introduced to the hosts for the evening, supermodel Natalya Vodyanova and TV host Andrey Malakhov. These two were both embarrassingly awkward throughout the entire performance.  The show moved quickly between each entry, with short video breaks in between each song to cover up the set-up time for each act. These little video clips featured collages of various places in Europe, images of a whole bunch of female models, and Russian words with English translations beneath them.

The show began with Montenegro, though the performance’s mediocre vocals proved to be a weak start. From there, the Czech Republic’s entry took the stage with a nervous and low-energy performance that was the first disappointment of the evening; I was expecting a much stronger performance from that group. Belgium’s entry continued the show with a high-energy performance, though the whole Elvis impersonation was just awkward in the setting of this contest. Belarus performed fourth, complete with a wind machine blowing on a dancer under some kind of sheet and a guitar player straight out of an 80s hair metal band. This performance had the strongest vocals thus far, though that isn’t really saying much, compared to the entries that preceded it. Next came the Swedish entry, which had a strong singer, but kind of an awkward “popera” song. Armenia concluded the first set of performances with what I thought was the strongest performance of the whole night–I enjoyed the song much better in this performance than I did in the music video, the vocals and dancing were strong, and everyone was wearing pretty elaborate costumes.

After the Armenian entry there was a short video showing the sped-up set-up process for the contest, as well as a bunch of short clips showing different Eurovision contestants backstage. Next came the performance for Andorra, which had good overall energy, but a mediocre singer. Switzerland followed with a solid performance–though the singer was not the greatest, the band was pretty strong. Turkey was the ninth performer, and I must admit that this performance, for me was the biggest disappointment of the evening. Perhaps because I’ve been tracking this entry for the past month I had higher expectations for this entry than the others, but I thought Hadise’s overly aggressive vocals really ruined it. The costumes and dancing were good, and I think that’s what saved the entry. Following Turkey was Israel, and though they sang a pretty cheesy song, the overall performance was strong.

After the Israeli entry I believe we got to meet the quirky host backstage in the greenroom (I can’t remember when exactly he popped up). He was one of my favorite parts of the show; between his accent and awkward grasp of the English language, I was laughing at just about everything he said. It’s interesting to me that the contest is primarily in English, with translations into French. I would have thought that since the host country is Russia, all the hosts would speak in their native language. I wonder if this is kind of strange for the Russian audience watching the show. Perhaps this is why there isn’t much reaction to what the hosts are saying, making their bad jokes feel just that much more awkward when no one in the audience reacts.

Anyway, the contest continued with the Bulgarian entry, which in my opinion was just awful. Between the tacky costumes, ridiculous hair, and poor vocal performance, I think the only redeeming part of the entry was the people on stilts in the background. This one was by far the worst of the night. To follow, the Icelandic entry took the stage, with a strong entry and overall good performance. Next was the Macedonian entry, which was just kind of a mess–for the first third of the song or so, the lead guitar sounded like it was playing the wrong song. Romania followed with a relatively good performance; the vocals weren’t the best, but it wasn’t as trashy as I expected it to be. Finland’s entry was up next, and I thought they did pretty well, especially considering how bad the song is, though I still thought the rap was really weak. Portugal gave an overall good performance, though the lead singer sounded nervous. I think the song might have been a little more pop-y than I remember from the video. The Maltese performance was relatively strong, though I’ve seen stronger performances of the song. I think this was the only entry without any kind of backup singer or dancer behind the lead vocalist. Bosnia and Herzegovina finished off the night with a performance that was better than expected, but still not as strong as some of the ones preceding it.

After all of the entries were performed, voters were given 10 minutes to cast their votes, during which two recaps of all the songs were shown to remind everyone of the entries. If I had been voting, here’s how I would have scored the entries, using the Eurovision point system (12, 10, and then 8 down to 1).

12: Armenia
10: Iceland
8: Switzerland
7: Israel
6: Turkey
5: Belarus
4: Sweden
3: Malta
2: Portugal
1: Czech Republic

Once the polls were closed and while the votes were being tallied, a video was played, showing a bunch of clips from various contests Russia has won in the past year. Apparently Russia’s had a successful year in pop culture and sports. Following that bit of Russian promotion came another, and the most schizophrenic performance of the evening: a medley of all kinds of Russian ensembles, including the enormous Russian army choir, a folk dance ensemble, sword dancing, break dancing, a highly choreographed drum ensemble, and a performance by pop duo t.A.T.u, who made their debut in the Eurovision contest in 2003. Once that was finished, the winning 10 countries were announced in random order. The actual scores from the semi-final round don’t become public until after the final round, so I don’t know which 9 were chosen by televote and which one was chosen by jury, or how the countries’ scores compare to each other.

The 10 entries that are moving on are: Turkey, Sweden, Israel, Portugal, Malta, Finland, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Romania, Armenia, and Iceland. This means, of course, that Switzerland, Belarus, the Czech Republic, Macedonia, Andorra, Bulgaria, Montenegro, and Belgium have all been eliminated from this year’s contest. Six out of the 10 I would have voted for made the finals–I’m kind of surprised that Finland, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Romania all made it to the final round and Switzerland didn’t. I’m interested to see how the actual scores played out.

The analysis of this semi-final from esctoday.com was interesting to read, as well as some of the comments at the bottom of the page. It seems that the most common sentiment is confusion as to why Switzerland didn’t make the final. After watching this first semi-final, I’m pretty excited to see the second semi-final on Thursday, as well as the final on Saturday.