gooddelta

EasyJet 2 wins. Amazing.

I gave it three months for PUNCHBAG to be sent again and it took only two, impressive! But an even quicker turnaround for Chloe Qisha! A couple of 90s dance classics in here too 🎉

Quite some presentation here, worth the wait ❤️

2017 definitely wasn't a great contest for me. My two favourites were Netherlands, which was lovely but not a classic, and Italy, which was so much worse than its Sanremo performance and studio version. Not a vintage year whatsoever.

I don't know about 2017, but 2022 was partly presumably the loss of the Russian audience?

Have 'hugged' so you can hopefully get the full gamut of reactions on this post. We just need someone to be shocked and crying and you've done it!

The run of chart success to me felt like a perfect storm of luck and fortune in many ways. 2019's Arcade, 2020's Think About Things and 2022's Snap all went viral on TikTok. Måneskin had great success after the contest albeit the winning song actually didn't do all that much here compared to the two big hits, so Eurovision was basically a great springboard to tell people the act existed. Space Man obviously did well after the great result and riding the wave of that and Sam's charisma. The four top ten hits in 2023 can be partly chalked up to the contest being held in Liverpool and the way bigger hype than usual for the show in the UK. I think we're now back to where we were in about 2019 - the situation is still better than than some years as five entries look like they will make the top 75, including surely a couple in the top 40. It's a shame nothing has truly taken off on Spotify this year, but without TikTok virality, a homegrown success or hosting, or an act with true global star appeal emerging, most years will probably just get a couple of small to middling hits at best. Viewing figures are also down in the UK this year, the Israel situation probably makes it less enticing to watch for some people, the true commercial hits with Western radio appeal like Tattoo were rather lacking this year (Baller is commercial, but ultimately in German so highly unlikely to be picked up by radio), and of course Spotify has of late become slower than ever in terms of people latching onto anything that isn't months old in a big way. So there's a real perfect storm of why any huge hits were unlikely this year I guess, unless something does go properly viral on TikTok. -------- I've ordered Remember Monday's vinyl single just now, I like to try and get the UK Eurovision entries physically when they are released. I'm glad that they are so positive and had a good experience. It probably helps that they weren't a huge act beforehand. Mae had had chart success before, while Olly was a big name, so the pressure of the experience and the terrible public score probably affected them more than an act who had no notable fanbase anyway and ended up with a respectable jury score and the biggest exposure they'd ever had. I'd feel like it was a win too.

I've seen a few TikToks of people using this too but just assumed it was my algorithm pushing it onto me. The song came and went in the charts quite quickly in 2004 and deserved way better so it would be nice to see a resurgence and it's fun to see them jump on it and comment on people using it in videos.

Going for Slash too, the Sandi song is very demo-y.

There is no televote in San Marino, it’s the only country as far as I know which uses a jury only, including in the televote only semi, which explains why they gave 12 to Belgium when basically nobody else voted for the track - it was a backup jury choice. I get your point though, in smaller countries that do have a televote, it doesn’t take much rigging to get a lot of points. Some Israel supporters wanted to make a big point and were happy to vote 20 times on five credit cards - there were people boasting on Twitter about doing exactly that. Who else really could be arsed? Nobody is going to sit and vote 100 times for anything unless you have a point to make.

Wow at Baller! Absolutely deserved, 15th in the contest was an injustice, although still higher than I thought it would get due to televoters’ (and juries) allergy to German entries usually.

Soda Club, I loved and bought that at the time.

Although ironically the one time I thought Azerbaijan genuinely had a competitive contender, in 2010, they were expected to challenge Lena for the win and came 5th in the end. Running Scared was a bore, badly sung, and agreed it was lucky to get through a weak and spread out field with unexpected results similar to what happened this year. Even more strange than this year as the odds bore absolutely no resemblance to the final results (France vs UK was the predicted top two, they came 15th and 11th). But 2013 was the real jumping the shark moment for them. I could see at least some charm and worth in their other top fives but Hold Me was absolutely hopeless, and to say that came above stuff like Margaret Berger is ludicrous. And the fact that the 2013 split results were never released tells you all you need to know about the legitimacy of the result, the jury rankings were probably a dead giveaway.

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What is at least mildly encouraging (but still awful) is that it seems like Israel's percentages of the votes that have been made public was at least lower than last year (albeit in Italy because Tutta L'Italia is such a known song there already). But 11% instead of 35% of a vote still doesn't matter if everybody else is collecting scraps. Hopefully next year if Israel are still in it then their voters will have further moved on and the percentages will be down to 3-4% and more easily beatable by other songs. New Day Will Rise's position of second was also massively flattered by the rest of the field being so weak and spread out. Israel's televote was at least lower than last year, and the total score was lower too than Hurricane despite the juries actually giving them more than last year. We really need a strong year next year with loads of big contenders (or of course, better yet, no Israel), this year was the most spread out the field has been on both voting metrics for nearly 15 years.

N Dubz, definitely not a great track for me. They did have some alright stuff though.

Love both but Deadmau5 is a hypnotic beauty - so glad it made the final after getting a lot of early votes.

Definitely Joss, quite a nice soulful version.

Love them all! So T2, amazing production, slightly grating but charming vocal.

I care little for Espresso Macchiato but found the performance really funny too (especially the security guards thing) and elevated from the national final. I completely get why it was the most (genuinely and not rigged) popular entry with the public. Also it's a huge earworm, people are streaming it too - it's the highest entry on Spotify UK. The moment I saw it in the semis I thought 'ah, this is going to have WAY more public appeal than I'd even imagined' (I thought it would be below KAJ for sure before that). I agree with Jahq on the vocals thing - it's somewhat important but really Eurofans bang on and on about vocals all season way above the potential of the actual song itself a lot of the time, and there are countless examples of why with an entry destined for big things, it doesn't matter much. Sure though, for borderline qualifiers it is likely to be more crucial to help push them over the line. E.g. I don't really think Dizzy would have done any better if Olly had delivered a note perfect performance last year, yet his vocal is cited as one of the primary reasons Dizzy failed - it's just a non-competitive song and whatever staging or vocal they threw at it wouldn't have changed that.

Interesting to see one more entry this year than last, five in the top 51 is good and hopefully all should chart officially. But nothing in the top 20 probably means no entries will make the top 20 officially. My top two (Bara Bada Bastu and Baller) being in the mix is fantastic to see, especially the public latching onto the latter with its midtable finish, BANGER. Here's 2024 and 2023 for comparison: 2024: 14. Nemo - The Code 28. Baby Lasagna - Rim Tim Tagi Dim 43. Joost - Europapa 64. Bambie Thug - Doomsday Blue 112. alyona alyona & Jerry Heil - Teresa & Maria 128. Slimane - Mon amour 164. Olly Alexander - Dizzy 165. Angelina Mango - la noia 2023 (UK hosting hype and buildup/extra coverage plus loads of commercial sounding entries this year): 1. Loreen - Tattoo 2. Käärijä - Cha Cha Cha 4. Alessandra - Queen of Kings 9. Mae Muller - I Wrote A Song 17. Noa Kirel - Unicorn 33. Gustaph - Because Of You 34. TEYA & SALENA - Who the Hell Is Edgar? 43. BLANKA - Solo 49. Loreen - Euphoria 60. Voyager - Promise 62. TVORCHI - Heart of Steel 71. Marco Mengoni - Due Vite 77. Andrew Lambrou - Break a Broken Heart 85. Vesna - My Sister's Crown 106. ALIKA - Bridges 114. Remo Forrer - Watergun 123. La Zarra - Evidemment 157. Joker Out - Carpe Diem

I've definitely noticed that the public seem to not care about a good/bad vocal. For sure it helps with your jury score to have a great vocal, but with the public vote I'd put Sissal, Remember Monday and Zoë Më up there all in the top ten best vocals, and they were the bottom three with the public. Extend that to the whole bottom five with Miriana and Melody (and I've also just noticed the public vote bottom five was all women ☹️). Estonia on the other hand was second on the televote, and the winner if you take out the Israel situation, and the vocal was...not good. But it doesn't matter for that kind of track. If you screw up the vocal on a ballad though, I guess you would be more exposed.

Quite some consistency to come 11th both times with the same track in a different field!

We didn't appear in the top ten vote of any single country (same as Switzerland). The highest we appeared in an individual televote was 18th! So we were nowhere near scoring even 1 point. James Newman's Embers got closer to scoring 😢 I'm not absolutely shocked but I thought we could at least get a point or two from Australia, Malta or Ireland. It's a shame to be so far away again and not really a deserved zero imo.

I think that - while sounds good in theory - would be open to manipulation. I could see Israel supporters just taking the bottom nine from the odds to put in their vote alongside Israel, which obviously would make the result even weirder not to mention completely unrepresentative.