gooddelta

Oh I really enjoyed Persephonia, I think it was my 7 pointer. Shame, but a cool discovery.

I liked it! Wrong semi though so I can’t help you there sadly. I think some of my other Semi 1 faves have borderline or out predictions so a bit nervous for those. I’m hoping to get into the final after missing twice already this year. Pretty addicted to this entry. No idea what will happen though as it feels like there is a path to the final for every song in the semi. Would imagine New Lex probably hasn’t helped themselves with a deduction, but not too sure other than that.

Glad Bangaranga made it, shame the Drake invasion meant it didn’t go top 20! Crazy how much bigger the winner was than the entire field this year commercially, nothing else showed up at all! Delta No.6 in the singles sales chart, where Dara is No.4, but streams must have been very low.

Geri easily. This is a good song from David Sneddon!

No real hesitation for Love On The Line, it's a much worse version of Another Level's Freak Me, which isn't great to start with.

Euphoria is an incredible song, it deserved a way bigger landslide win, it was a country mile ahead of everything (put together) in 2012. Loreen got very lucky to win again in 2023 and I do wonder if even three years on it would have done it now. It seems the introduction of more jurors and younger jury members has given more televote friendly songs a jury boost too, and I feel like Cha Cha Cha would have got a lot nearer to Tattoo on the jury vote under the new rules. No denying that Cha Cha Cha deserved that win, it was the big moment of the year and way ahead on the televote. But then Tattoo was such a huge hit in the real world in the end, so that winning wasn't really undeserved either, the jury saw in it what music consumers saw in it (plus Loreen's great performance and talent as always).

The back cover of the vinyl confirms ATB is the UK mix And Pretenders is the Tin Tin Out mix, which I guess must have been the radio version. That Don't Impress Me Much, however, is the album version...

Amazing Tattoo Great Bangaranga Zitti E Buoni Amar Pelos Dois Good Arcade 1944 The Code Ok Stefania No Toy Wasted Love I will say I'm not really a big fan of the songs that win Eurovision in general, songs that tend to finish lower down tend to be more my thing usually. But Tattoo is probably my favourite song overall of the 2020s so far, I really love that. Bangaranga is absolutely brilliant, loved Måneskin and I have a soft spot for the beauty and fragility of Amar Pelos Dois. The next three are all good, very high quality. Stefania isn't winner quality, but is ok as a song. Toy always hugely grated on me and I really can't stand Wasted Love, not my thing whatsoever.

I'm at an event in Barcelona and T AMARÉ is playing here. Going to assume they are Benidorm Fest and not New Lexico stans, but still. They have also been playing Bebe Rexha's New Religion on loop.

Yes, she must have been overwhelmed by it, as it was completely organic too. I love her, so thankful that she is ok, what a woman ❤️

I think Misfit! I still love it a lot. Can't Fight The Moonlight is obviously a huge classic though which I also love.

Could Blue (Da Ba Dee) be saved for the Final Chapter perhaps, I guess they have to hold a few big hits back. It was on the Sizzling Summer and 93-03 albums in 2023 but hasn't been compiled since, perhaps there's a chance the license has been lost. The Millennium Prayer feels like an Extra closing song, if they bother to include it. Maybe that can wait for Final Chaper Extra.

Yes, we had to do a separate dance edition for 1999 for BuzzJack Presents as dance was too good to only have one dance disc. You could go on and on for pop as well with more discs.

Awaiting the Extra for this, as the main album is mostly the usual suspects, apart from The Pretenders, I can't even recall that song. I need the other Steps songs, Thunderbugs, Back In My Life by Alice Deejay, Precious, Ann Lee! Disc 3 is great though, so much great dance and Erase / Rewind too <3 My favourite songs of the year are all here in Alice Deejay, The Corrs and ATB, I hope they use the hit mix for the latter.

Amazing year so this album couldn’t be anything less than great but Eiffel 65 is a big miss, hope they didn’t lose the license. Curious not to go with Boom, Boom, Boom, Boom!! I’ll get the vinyl for this one as I love the year so much. Just so relived that they must have kept As for the Extra! Common sense prevails.

Voted. Wow, Semi 2 is great, I like considerably more from it than the whole final last month. In fact, I loved 12 songs a lot, hope the other two can make it in. A couple of songs I already know and love, and lots of brilliant discoveries. I have checked Semi 1 also, and it wasn't really as much my cup of tea overall but Herbilore and Scotland 2 have to get through with these entries, right?

I don't know why they put Steal My Sunshine on Now Millennium, it peaked in 1999 and they could have picked a 2000 release as they only filled two discs with each year on those albums, whereas for 1999 we will get 7 discs, plus anything that might appear on a Final Chaper. Seemed a waste of a space.

Manchester United won the treble in 1999, which is what the pic on the Facebook page relates to. So guess it's Yearbook 1999 (or some sort of football/World Cup album that features Come On You Reds). If the album kicks off with As by George Michael and Mary J Blige, and not Britney, then I want a refund.

A long time ago, but Fly On The Wings Of Love was 150/1 shortly before the final. It probably had shortened by the day of the final. Everybody in 2001 was similarly unfancied. It's pretty unusual these days for the odds to be so wrong though as we all have access to the songs online months in advance and people post their own rankings and simulate juries weeks in advance of the contest, plus we can see how the songs are charting in advance and doing on YouTube etc across Europe. There are so many more metrics and much more data available to make decent predictions. However staging and an unexpectedly great performance can still provide the shocks these days, as seen in the likes of Bulgaria and Romania this year, Bambie Thug for Ireland in 2024, Conchita and The Common Linnets in 2014... People can spend months betting in advance but really, the semi-finals is where we get our first intel as to how things will go. Dara won the jury show audience poll in the semi-final unexpectedly and that was the first indication for me that this was going a lot bigger than expected. Funnily enough it also went viral quite quickly on TikTok some weeks ago, but as we know, TikTok rarely correlates with the contest hits (like Portugal last year, Snap in 2022) so I don't think people read a lot into that.

Delta was 10th and just cut off in that post, Ukraine was the only song missing from the real top 10 on Spotify streams, replaced by poor Felicia, who is still doing well it seems, as she has on streams since release, just nobody voted for it outside Scandinavia. Bangaranga's numbers are really impressive indeed, easily the most popular 'real world' winner since Tattoo. Funny nobody really saw it coming until the semis but then, that was a performance for the history books. It certainly sold the song to me, and many others I'd imagine.

They banked upon her being a bigger name than she was I suppose with the late November release (fair assumption after a near million-selling debut the year before) and it just got lost in the Christmas rush and never recovered. There are many ways that era could have done better, from release dates to single choices. And then all the press attention about Brian and Kerry Katona really didn't help in the UK and I guess they felt there was no mileage left in the album after that.

Had San Marino sent the same song by the same artist with the same staging, which could feasibly have happened (more feasible than UK or Germany sending it anyway), I'm really struggling to see that it would have been even in the top half of the scoreboard. In fact they kind of did go down the same route with Serhat, which granted did pretty well for San Marino second time around, but was hardly a bumper success. I do understand that many people may have enjoyed the nostalgia and staging, but at the same time believe personally that Italy got an inflated position with it. But then again I was shocked that it won Sanremo too, so clearly it has something about it that eludes me.

Oh that's huge for Bangaranga, but then it is such a commercial sounding song that I always thought would be the breakout hit this year (although definitely didn't expect it to win until the semi performance indicated it had a fair chance). Weird that nothing else entered though, I thought maybe Delta or the Romanian entry could have scraped top 200, hopefully with all the Drake stuff clogging up the chart and loads of stuff on ACR something else can still make the top 75 along with Bangaranga.

The UK seem to do well when we get involved in the pomp and ceremony of what people consider 'British'. Andrew Lloyd Webber on the piano playing a classy ballad with Jade delivering a strong vocal, Sam Ryder channelling the greats of the 1970s. Maybe that's the lane we are best at, although it would be nice to do well with something more progressive too, but BBC just don't do that well it seems.

I suppose Italy is just so admired and respected as a culture and Italian as a language that maybe their entries get subconscious jury support as being a seal of quality, especially when they have often had to win the competitive Sanremo to even get here. This song was a naff, dated disco number with weak staging, so not sure what the quality seen here was, but maybe got some nostalgia votes from older viewers? I feel like 1st and 3rd were driven by younger voters and 4th to 6th by older viewers looking for something more conservative and more traditionally Eurovision. I'm not surprised several of these did well because a lot of younger viewers may have been more likely to boycott this year. The Italian entry is so corny that I'm sure it would have been a televote nul pointer for the UK. I don't think the UK will ever take a break unless we were to actually leave, because even though viewing figures are way down, over 5m is still very impressive in this day and age. It's a banker of a show for the BBC, I'm sure they don't mind just sending any old thing, barely promoting it, and not putting much effort into supporting the artist, as long as we have an entry in the mix. They could screen the show without us being in it of course, but it wouldn't have anywhere near as much engagement without a home entry. The sad thing is for the UK fans who have to put up with these terrible results every year and can see the ways BBC are going wrong but have no power to do anything about it.