gooddelta

A lot of rock bands had their biggest hit with a ballad or slower song - Aerosmith, Scorpions, Extreme as mentioned... Not saying these bands didn't have other slower numbers but Bon Jovi's Always was kind of different to the majority of their other hits, Stereophonics' longest runner by some stretch in the top five was Handbags and Gladrags, and then you've got songs like It's Been A While by Staind, To Be With You by Mr Big, The Sound of Silence by Disturbed... Cher wasn't exactly known for dance music before Believe and it became by far her biggest hit. She's done similar stuff since, but not really before. Sometimes a genre pivot works really well for artists.

That's definitely true about Not Ready To Make Nice, it was considered quite an inspired entry/winner at the time as it wasn't much of a hit here or very well known outside the US at that point.

Agreed, Klara No.1 on Spotify and Erik No.4. They do occasionally go mad for a slower song or mid-tempo (Anna Bergendahl/Anders Bagge) so Erik could do well in the final.

Abracadabra by some way for me, but I also liked Caity Baiser and actually quite enjoy that Elton and Brandi song. Ava was quite disappointing and I didn't get a huge amount from the LISA song on first listen. All I Ever Asked has always been a beautiful track, think I could do without the extra vocalist on it though, I'll stick to the original.

Also Agnes' Release Me (Herzebania) and Adele's Someone Like You (Hendinia) were BJSC winners a good 5-6 months before they became huge hits in the UK. The same year, Hendinia won with Roll Deep's Good Times (a UK No.1) although I think that was only a few weeks before it was released so possibly was on the radio/music channels at that point already. This was completely unprecedented for Agnes (who knew it wouldn't just be yet another Scandipop song given no push in the UK) and was before Adele had a commercial reawakening via Make You Feel My Love getting hammered on X Factor that year. So as a community we definitely saw the potential in those two songs.

It was sent in early 2008 so about a year after the Grammy. The first BJSC contest was held in December 2007. This was sent a couple of years after it was a hit. The first five or so contests were a bit of a minefield of cheap as people were finding their feet and understanding the best way to approach the contest. We had songs entered like Bring Me To Life, Bittersweet Symphony, Say You'll Be There etc...mad looking back.

Several of my entries did: Sara Bareilles - Love Song (sent in 2008, came 1st - UK No.4 hit a few months later) Pixie Lott - Boys and Girls (sent in 2008, came 3rd - UK No.1 hit in 2009) Hozier - Take Me To Church (sent in 2013, came 11th - huge UK No.2 hit in 2014/2015) Walk The Moon - Shut Up And Dance (sent in 2014, came 4th, huge UK No.4 hit in 2015) Freya Ridings - Lost Without You (sent in 2018, came 2nd (tied on points with the winner), big No.9 hit later that year unexpectedly) I also sent Example's Watch The Sun Come Up several months before he released that/was well known in 2009, and it eventually went to No.19 in the UK but paved the way to much bigger things. Never in a million years did I expect Freya to go big, sparse piano ballads like that rarely did anything unless you were Adele. I did tbf think Hozier would be big with the right promotion, and I also thought it would potentially win the contest for me, but I was very wrong, it didn't come top 10. Still did better than the likes of Lorde's Royals (which came low top 30 iirc) and Gotye's Somebody That I Used To Know, which was a DNQ. Just like poor Pink Pony Club, which just proves that a DNQ is no barometer of a song's quality.

I've had Klara's song on repeat, definitely the song to beat so far for me. Although it reallly reminds me of Alone by Alan Walker in various ways (others have compared the piano bit to When Love Takes Over).

There's very little jury bait so far, so whatever it is, if it's something where they can flex their (incredible, going off what I've seen) vocals, then it should get a decent haul of jury points. For televoters, yes, it will inevitably fade into the background unless it's a modern classic (unlikely) because there are already a few televote magnets confirmed and the likes of Sweden/Italy/France to come.

1. Telenova - Time Is A Flower 2. Oklou - choke enough 3. Rose Gray - Louder, Please 4. The Weeknd - Hurry Up Tomorrow 5. Lola Young - This Wasn't Meant For You Anyway 6. FKA twigs - EUSEXUA 7. Marie Reim – Sternzeichen Liebe 8. Alan Walker - Walkerworld 2.0 9. Olly Alexander - Polari 10. Infinity Song – Metamorphosis Complete

I don't get how nobody got Natalie Cassidy. Her singing voice basically IS her talking voice, I didn't even need any clues. Especially Davina guessing Morgana Robinson and then going on about her Fearne Cotton impression? When her Natalie impression is so much more well known :lol:

Oh no :o Hope she recovers quickly and wasn't badly hurt, what a nasty turn of events.

I actually quite like this, it's got an interesting melody for me. Was expecting worse based on what I'd heard.

Amazing 01 Finland: Erika Vikman - Ich Komme 02 Albania: Shkode Elektronike - Zjerm Great 03 Latvia: Tautumeitas - Bur men laimi Serving kant 04 Malta: Miriana Conte - Kant Good 05 Luxembourg: Laura Thorn - La poupee monte le son 06 Belgium: Red Sebastian - Strobe Lights 07 Ukraine: Ziferblat - Bird of Pray Ok 08 Greece: Klavdia - Asteromata 09 Slovenia: Klemen - How Much Time Do We Have Left? 10 Ireland: Emmy - Laika Party 11 Spain: Melody - Esa Diva 12 Montenegro: Nina Zizic - Dobrodosli A bit mixed at the moment, but yay for having two really strong entries to root for so far. And lovely to see Tautumeitas in for Latvia <3 I'm a bit conflicted on Kant, I think she's great and it's catchy and funny as a meme but a lot of the track feels cheap and tacky to me. Still clears a lot of the current field though.

I think probably U2, not a favourite of mine from them and on balance I still would probably hear Photograph. This is a really strong bunch mostly.

A good result for Fragma as it’s hardly seen as a classic even though I love it. Going for Killers again.

Pogues

I'm pretty gutted for Heaven Sent, that's a fantastic song with an incredible vocal and would have I'm sure done very well for Malta, especially with juries. But Kant could well end up being a viral moment, and the Maltese public probably cottoned onto that prospect. I still think that if they have to change it, don't swap it for another word, keep the word silent and get the crowd to sing 'Kant'. People will get the message without any rules being broken. The EBU can't stop the crowd singing, unless they play out a second of canned applause over each 'Kant'.

Definitely feels to me like Dressed Crab is far too good not to easily win. I've not been taken by Wolf either much. Bear was more entertaining and versatile for me.

Love them both but Évidemment and Occidentali's Karma definitely lacked the studio magic live at Eurovision. Not sure what happened with La Zarra but a lot of French entries that aren't ballads/chansons don't translate live that well for whatever reason. Occidentali's Karma had quite a bad three minute edit for Eurovision too but even so, I didn't think he would have any trouble in being top three in the final, and sixth was quite a surprise. I really disliked the staging. Heroes I still love, I think it's very anthemic and gets stick for being a generic winner but it's a well produced song, a charismatic performer who sang it well, cool staging, contemporary (in 2015 anyway), I get why it won for sure. Never been into Loco Loco or their 2020 entry.

Confirmed with something just so typically me. I love love love the lyrics and video for this, so I'm fully hoping it does better than the last two!

I'd be surprised if it actually is country, I'm definitely feeling it will be more like OG3NE/Wilson Phillips, but will wait and see. I fully expect to like this entry (OG3NE was my favourite entry of 2017 in the end) but for it also not to be competitive.

Really happy about this, nice to be able to stan Latvia. I sent them to BJSC in 2019 and they were a DNQ, I don't think this will happen in Eurovision though!

Woot! Amazing track, performance and artist. Finally got there after losing in 2020 (not that it would have made any difference ultimately). I think the juries will stop it winning and not convinced it's a televote winner either - it's not going to be as big as Cha Cha Cha on that metric, but hopefully 200-250 points. Definitely a safe top ten!

Ehhh, annoying that Nomi Tales went straight out, I really like that and think it's a strong grower too. Surprised that Erik was the first DTF, it's decent enough but definitely not wowing me. But I'm happy for him to get a solo finalist 16 (!) years after he was there with EMD. Glad Klara got the second spot though anyway, although the fact it wasn't the first qualifier suggests it won't be contending. We definitely don't have the winner yet in these four finalists so far. Hush Hush probably has more chance than all of them :lol: