37 minutes ago, Hassaan said:

I did wonder if the juries would have liked our entry more than the viewers but I still didn't expect 0.

I did!!! Been saying it since day one!

I was worried Malta would flop, due to the censorship, but I was expecring like an 80 points flop, not 9!! That and Switzerland were the big shocks for me.

25 minutes ago, Herbs said:

I’d love to see the votes without Israel & Ukraine. Both getting way more votes than they would without current conflicts.

Agreee, particulsrly Isrsel. Ir's been messing with the contest results for a good few years now, majorly skewing the public vote. Didn't they get like 80% of the vote in an Italian semi final? I reckon the televote would look VERY different without the political voting going on rn. When will it end?!

People seem surprised by the Israel vote? Easily one of the top five songs in the contest.

9 minutes ago, Cody Piastri said:

I do think we'll be entering another new meta entry-wise. We're gonna go from left field metal/folk influenced entries to ones that are more classical/opera based

Theater kids this is your time 😅

not theatre, the uk got 0 televoting points for that genre

18 minutes ago, Herbs said:

Yeah it is becoming a trend that the jury picks the winner / helps the better song musically

Still not sure the better song won last year.

8 minutes ago, gooddelta said:

I'm very worried about this. If 300 televote points are basically secure then the jury need to completely ignore it to stop it. But how can they if Israel send a genuine banger normal pop song one year and not the usual dated propaganda ballad that's easy to ignore.

I suppose this year was an anomaly though because it's the most spread out the vote has been in years, which was no real surprise I guess as it was always a hard one to call.

So the jury winner has now won three years in a row, but I will take it over the alternative.

baby lasagna truly is an anomaly

i do fear our luck will run out next year

9 minutes ago, Chez Wombat said:

Well I'm obviously very pleased my favourite won as that's very rare, but I'm even more pleased given what we almost got! To be positive for a minute, it's really deserved for such a brilliantly performed and genre-spanning song and a hell of a comeback after 2nd last last year!

As for what came 2nd, eurgh x It seems they did pretty much equally to last year points-wise, just finished higher due to the lower scores all around but it's still quite disgusting we've got to put up with this every year now. Even putting aside the obvious, it's always a shame that a contest meant to reflect the best in music has been completely overrun with voters for anything but that reason. Juries need to seriously be careful with this now.

Stanning Estonia as high as 3rd as it was really fun and Albania top 10 is a great result, that's a surprise underperformance for Sweden and a shame for something quite different from them. Surprisingly low for Finland and would've liked to see Latvia in the top 10 too. Brutal for ourselves but I completely expected it, It was a much better than expected performance from the juries, but we've got to go further to appeal to the public which this song was just never going to do.

It was the best song, but I LOVED Latvia in the end. I hadn't heard it before rhe contest, or Estonia. My top three:

1. Austria 2. Latvia 3. Estonia

Massive surprises! Estonia csme second, really. I honestly think it's time to review Isrsel's participation, at lesst for now. It's making the right wing hijack the voting, and it's not good for the contest.

12 minutes ago, gooddelta said:

I'm very worried about this. If 300 televote points are basically secure then the jury need to completely ignore it to stop it. But how can they if Israel send a genuine banger normal pop song one year and not the usual dated propaganda ballad that's easy to ignore.

I suppose this year was an anomaly though because it's the most spread out the vote has been in years, which was no real surprise I guess as it was always a hard one to call.

So the jury winner has now won three years in a row, but I will take it over the alternative.

I'm worried too. They could end up top 3/ winning every year until the right wing feel the Gaza situation has calmed down, and who knows how long it will take Israrl to withdraw. It's not the juries's fault for nor ignoring a competent vocal. Ir's the organisers' fault for not pulling them from the competition. They had a very good resson to with Ocrober Rain too...

first of all what an incredible show, I was watching it with friends so chose not to do live commentary here but I think at least 20 songs out of the lineup were very enjoyable - I sent votes to Lithuania (big indie fave), Latvia (didn't intend to vote for them tonight but they gave such a good performance they deserved it), Sweden (sauna) and Albania (zjerm nation).

For the results, very pleased the UK did well on the jury, we actually got an impressive points haul and it's unfortunate that the point numbers of songs around it caused us to place technically lower than last year, and we absolutely did not deserve nul on the televote - we have to think of ways to capture public attention as well as the juries next time. Very stellar performance from Remember Monday, they've been excellent entrants for us, more like them in the future please.

obviously my heart was in my mouth, we were so close to absolute disaster for the EBU and while it was far from my first choice, I'll absolutely take Wasted Love over a dull propaganda ballad making a mockery of the contest. Good winning performance, I was sorta sure France was going to be winning after everything had been performed, but on both predictions and taste it seems I'm slightly out of step with the public this year, somewhat unusual.

Zjerm finishing top 10 and Bara Bada Batsu finishing 4th is a pretty decent consolation though, justice for Lithuania.

22 minutes ago, StargazerG said:

People seem surprised by the Israel vote? Easily one of the top five songs in the contest.

For some people, maybe? If they haven't heard many songs before and like rising ballads.

Far more compelling ballads on offer tonight, France, Switzerland, even Netherlands and Italy are more interesting and better-written songs - this is all arguable as a matter of taste but only to a point. To the extent Israel outperformed its competitors, no, that's not a genuine expression of love for the song. The extensive vote campaign targeted at partisan Israel supporters across Europe that has been at a consistent level for the past few years is undoubtedly more of a reason and if the EBU aren't going to do what they should have done and ban Israel, they should at least ban such anti-competitive ad campaigns that are explicitly targeted at people who will not watch the show or ever consider the rest of the acts.

I may or may not have booked a room in Vienna already :skull:

Shell shocked at France and Finland, especially Finland not being top 10. It was tense and really scary that Israel came so close with such a bad song, it worries me that in coming years they can easily win.

They really need to ban them because fully that was just propaganda/political vote.

They won’t ban Israel they have too much influence and power. Best thing is to not make noise about them. Most people supporting them and voting don’t even know why they’re doing it. They just like opposing things baiting and trolling and making people mad so if they don’t think that’s achievable they won’t even care to vote for Israel.

6 minutes ago, Liаm said:

Shell shocked at France and Finland, especially Finland not being top 10. It was tense and really scary that Israel came so close with such a bad song, it worries me that in coming years they can easily win.

They really need to ban them because fully that was just propaganda/political vote.

Yup, and they can achieve this behind closed doors ro get them to withdraw temporarily, and far less messily, thsn with an outright ban. The EBU leader didn't day a peep tonight, as he was traumatised by the boos lsst year. He knows how unpopular it is to leave Israel in. The crowd did right to chant Austria, instesd of booing. They wouldn't censor out support, but would censor out boos.

Shocked that Finland flopped, but so did Kant!! The pagan Latvia song really should have smashed, too.

Well the rest of the Top 5 isn’t great but I’ll take my 2nd favourite winning! I loved “Wasted Love” from the 1st listen. I knew my favourite from Albania was too subtle to be a winning contender so Top 10 for that is great.

And I did see the 0 televotes for Remember Monday coming a mile off but what a lovely jury score for them. I didn’t expect the Switzerland 0 but I did think it would be low, and equally I didn’t expect quite so much for them from the jury so c’est la vie. Fancy being a dual national and both one’s nations getting 0 televotes though!

2 minutes ago, Liam Sota said:

They won’t ban Israel they have too much influence and power. Best thing is to not make noise about them. Most people supporting them and voting don’t even know why they’re doing it. They just like opposing things baiting and trolling and making people mad so if they don’t think that’s achievable they won’t even care to vote for Israel.

'Not making noise' was pretty much the strategy this year! They were placed in an uncompetitive slot and barely anyone talked about their entry all season. Unfortunately this is going to keep happening, an astroturfing campaign of 300-odd points for the Israeli entry no matter what it is because they have enough people behind it (them being trolls seems far more unlikely than them being right-wing Zionists, though I suppose I repeat myself a bit) to dominate the televote in a large number of countries in my view illegitimately.

The contest can't be dealing with spinning a roulette every year to see if something can beat an entry that at present would destroy the contest. It'll certainly remain so while Israel continues to bomb Gaza at this rate.

I don’t think they’d go “backwards” and take away the televote, but it feels like the televote has absolutely no legitimacy and no place at this point. For something like Ich Komme to not even come top 10 and the most bland, generic Israel propaganda ballad to come 2nd, is just insane. If Israel just send any kind of serviceable pop song in the future, think Unicorn or Toy, they will absolutely walk it. Hurricane, fine, that was an ok pop ballad all things aside, but if you put A New Day Will Rise in another language and say Montenegro sang it, that’s an easy obvious NQ.

Although the jury was suss, Estonia doing fairly well was insane, for it to just be locked on as Israel doing so well there is no point. It means songs like Ich Komme and Bara Bada Bastu have less chance since the televote they’re going for has less points available when Israel is mopping it all up from right wing loons who don’t even watch or care.

I loved Wasted Love since it premiered, I’m happy it won and it was incredibly performed, but I hope that this winning again doesn’t mean we get a lot of more sterile, jury bait songs next year and it sets a trend. The fun songs are being penalised and I don't see any internal selection picking something like say Ich Komme. Or do we have to have an immaculately crafted to win jury bait song every year or risk Israel winning?

My ranking after the final:

12 Lithuania

10 Albania

8 Latvia

7 Germany

6 Austria

5 Sweden

4 Spain

3 Portugal - y'all are still haters xx

2 Switzerland

1 Ukraine

11th Iceland

12th Greece

13th Denmark

14th Luxembourg

15th France

16th Italy

17th Finland

18th Armenia

19th San Marino

20th Poland

21st Estonia

22nd United Kingdom

23rd Norway

24th Netherlands

25th Malta

26th Israel

Songs that notably grew on me on second listen: Albania (was already a fave but became an even bigger one, I thought 2nd/3rd was a tossup maybe leaning to Latvia for me but Albania are now a pretty clear 2nd for me although my whole top 3 is excellent), Ukraine, Greece, Luxembourg, France, Estonia. Plenty more that I'd say sounded better on second listen as well but those are the main ones.

Songs that I liked less on second listen: Finland (I understand why everyone here loves it but idk I just find the chorus falls really flat at least in the live performance? and felt that even moreso in the final than in the semi - I might like this more in studio form, will endeavour to check out the studio versions), Armenia, Israel (I was being generous not ranking it last in the semi, in retrospect I was being a little too mean to Miriana x)

Felt the 0 to the UK from the public was inevitable as I just can't picture who this song would be appealing to - other than perhaps juries who would highly reward the admittedly strong live vocals, so I guess it was nice to see us ending up with a not totally disastrous result overall thanks to a top 10 with the juries (although us finishing a place lower than last year with almost twice as many points?!) 0 to Switzerland from the public however was ridiculous! I swear French ballads usually do quite well with the public, then again France themselves also did quite poorly on the televote so...

'Wasted Love' is easily my favourite winner since 'Stefania' so happy for JJ, it's a bit of a meh that it's the third year in a row a song was given the win by the juries while being a way off the public's top spot but given what was #1 in the televote this time this isn't the right time to be complaining about that. Israel doing so well is disturbing though, it's really a ticking time bomb until Israel flukes out a ridiculous win either via the competition being too split or just the juries giving them too many points (I'll take it as mildly reassuring that Israel actually got a lower televote score than last year, they just came closer to winning because scores were more spread out).

'Espresso Macchiato' finishing ahead of 'Bara Bada Bastu' is wild, happy for Tommy even though this song is, er, not his best work. Italy's song was fine but I really don't know how it apparently stood out enough to come 5th here, I guess Italy are just destined to come top 10 every year no matter what they send. Either that or it was the harmonica solo carrying it. x

I really deluded myself hard into thinking Albania would be more of a contender than they were but at the end of the day for this kind of song 8th is a very respectable result. Beatriçe and Kolë you will forever be legends #zjermnation. Very pleasantly surprised that Latvia finished top half, and I'll happily take 16th for Lithuania as although it was comfortably my favourite I wasn't deluding myself that would be troubling anywhere near the top end (and there was a massive gap from them to the top 15 so they pretty much won the 'best of the rest'). The UK jury showing absolute taste in giving decent points to both of those including the 12 to Latvia!

Portugal robbed, Spain robbed, Iceland robbed (0 from the jury is very rude). San Marino was not amazing but they didn't deserve to come last.

Assuming whoever updated the Wikipedia article is reliable, the semi winners were Ukraine and Israel (so LOL at a not insignificent number of people really thinking Ukraine might be out this year, though they were at least not an overwhelming winner like Israel unfortunately were), but then the second places are iconic - Albania and Latvia(!!!). Sweden and Estonia only coming 4th and 5th!

Austria came only 5th in the semi, as did Estonia. These results were bizarre across the board from the start to say the least (apart from the eventual winner). I guess the contest was very open despite bookers having Sweden and Austria as clear faves all the time - the rest were practically even with them as well.

I really think the chance to vote for hours changes the televoting in the final.

Watch Israel's song do nothing on charts compared to true favourites, just like last year.

Edited May 18May 18 by Sour Candy

14 hours ago, Last Dreamer said:

Austria is all about modern Eurovision, so have huge chances to win.

I was right. 😥