Umi

I'm curious about the quality of this one because, as mentioned, she's spoken about being in a 5-album contract that she is extremely eager to get out of. The last time she phoned an album in, it was dire, but she also hated every second of making and promoting it. This could be very bad, but it seems unlikely that she'd put herself through that twice. No Shame was beautiful so I'm optimistic but at the same time, it felt like such a labour of love and time and so defining to her after the inital post-2009 break. I find it hard to see where she goes from there so quickly after putting that out. It would feel slightly weird to me if she went back to political commentary, but another autobiographical album would seem almost needless. In other words, I have no idea what to expect or even what I want.

I think what the UK needs more than anything is an actual artist. The main difference I noticed between the UK and everyone else this year wasn't the quality of the song but the obvious lack of authenticity in it compared to the rest of the competition. Bops can just be bops, but when you send a ballad I really don't think you can afford it being inauthentic unless you've got Russia-tier staging. I'm sure a lot of the people in this contest were singing songs that were written for them but they were all at least able to sell the song as being theirs or as meaning something to them (and this is especially important with ballads). Michael's song was easily the most autopilot ballad of the contest lyrically and there was just no reason to find it credible. I know it sounds kind of pretentious but ballads are meant to touch people and I'm not sure if something as emotionally wooden as 'Bigger Than Us' actually can. You could feel the sadness in Duncan and the force of will in Tamara, but Michael just looked like ... a guy singing a song he was told to sing. It does make me wonder if the UK's musical culture being tempered so heavily by the dominance of X Factor in recent decades has caused the UK to disconnect heavily from the rest of Europe in what it wants from musical contest performers. Authenticity and artistry seems extremely undervalued in the UK's Eurovision selection process compared to very mathematical song choices (key changes and money notes can make up for anything!) and someone being able to adlib effectively in a final chorus. When you look at the songs that do well in Eurovision, the priorities are jarringly different to those of the UK. Maybe it's that the contest's reputation is so toxic that actual artists are unreachable for the UK's delegation, but that's something that needs fixing if so.

I think North Macedonia and San Marino qualifying has done a lot to alleviate that. Last year I think we spoke about both of those, plus there was a bit of speculation about Azerbaijan (which thankfully ended up being silly). I guess we could ask questions about Montenegro this year, but I think we've landed in a good spot where most countries have a qualification in recent memory at this point, thankfully!

I would be extremely hesitant to blame Sweden's comparatively meh televote performances on anything political. In fact, in the past couple of years I've felt more that there are dynamics in the jury working in Sweden's favour unjustly ("it's Sweden, it must be credible") than anything to do with the televote. I honestly don't find it surprising at all that the consistently vanilla nature of Sweden's entries is getting them left behind on the televote at all, even if all of the songs are fantastically well-made and the performers are very competent. At the moment it feels that they're gunning for jury votes above televotes and they're getting the appropriate rewards for that. Australia is a weirder case for this year in particular but I see similar dynamics to Sweden in a broader sense, where very safe entries are passed by on the televote in favour of more striking ones. This year I suspect that the Eurovision fandom's lack of love for the entry was telling, and operatic pop just seems kind of dodgy (see 'La Forza' getting a slightly underwhelming result) for some reason, no matter how spectacular it was. Kate definitely deserved better.

That's interesting, I always assumed that they did. I guess there's no reason that educated guesswork couldn't resemble having knowledge of the results. Well, that gives me a bit more hope!

I'm guessing Norway didn't have a great semi then.

Am I right in thinking that we'll find out the results of the DNQs tonight?

The juries have carried Australia to the final every single year they've entered, no matter the opinion of the public. This year won't be any different.

Srbuk seems like a really bad opener to me honestly. I don't think anybody wants to start a show with a song like that.

Just say what you want to say - there is no need to hide behind indirect questions. You may wish it was the case that wanting to leave the EU was the same thing as being willing to leave the EU under any circumstance, but that is not the case for many people. It is not contradictory to vote to leave the EU but decide that you would rather stay than leave in the way you are being asked to.

There is a difference between "I would like to leave the EU" and "I would rather leave the EU in any way possible than stay in". Just because 50%+ of voters wanted to leave the EU doesn't mean that 50%+ of voters are happy to leave with no deal.

Both of their last two entries were extremely polarising as well though. Just look at how strong your own views about them are.

Similar thoughts to the rest of you guys really. Map looks beautiful and I'm OK with the starter first stages but it's all about the gameplay at this point. A couple of generations ago I would have trusted the gameplay to be solid but I'm terrifed of a Sun/Moon rerun at this point.

What a joke and a huge disrespect to all of the artists who took part in the selection. How can you choose to withdraw rather than just sending the person the public chose? I just don't understand why they let people like Maruv take part if they weren't willing to send them. This whole debacle should have been dealt with long before the televised show.

The political shitstorm tonight was absolutely gross. MARUV didn't get the worst of it on the night but if she's robbed of her victory for being a ... normal artist from Ukraine, that's horrifying.

I have no idea what the competition for this entry was but as whatever as it is, it must be Germany's best entry in years. Their standards are bad enough that this is an improvement.

I don't think this is overly likely to be one of my favourites this year but I'm so happy with this choice anyway - it's so nice to see Italy choose something different when it would have been so easy to be pedestrian this year. Can't wait to see how this is staged in May.

This has been a ludicrously samey night, even for Sanremo standards.

I went into this with no real idea of what was to come and holy shit, what an abysmal heat. Worse than any of last year's by a mile.

If the jury hated it and the public hated it, maybe the song was just shit? I wanted 'Passio' through but it wasn't robbed just because everyone else realised it was a crap song.

Florina was dire in my opinion, yes, though maybe not the worst of the night? She was really stiff on stage, vocals were all over the place, and the song is pretty whatever. I was more surprised by the good televote.

Did anybody else absolutely despise 'Le Petit Nicolas'? I was horrified to see it go through, and mostly off of jury votes as well? Gutted for Aysat's televote, which I sadly did expect after what happened to Emmy Liyana last year.

Ugh, the selection is crap this year. I didn't expect it to go backwards but there is a huge amount of half-baked stuff here. 'Roi' is getting so much interest but it bores the hell out of me and Bilal can be much more interesting than that.

It's so hard to care about the bottom half of the women's draw at all, while the top half is positively mouth-watering. I can see both of those matchups being bloodbaths. Kerber and Halep both looked great today, but I can see Halep wilting against Kerber. Muguruza has looked comfortable all tournament, but Sharapova obliterated Pliskova. I can't see any way that the champion doesn't come from this half of the draw. In terms of the men, I am mostly excited for Thiem to have a shot at getting to the final before meeting Nadal. I really struggle to see Zverev stopping him, and I'm not sure I have too much faith in Djokovic either. And at the end of the day, getting to the final of Roland Garros is all that any man bar Nadal can ask for.

I mean, Spain weren't exactly doing well before OT either, were they? I think it's worth giving the format another chance.