LexC

Netherlands was completely SUBLIME! Moldova are refreshingly bonkers after quite a few downbeat numbers.

Gut feeling is still that Ukraine won't be our winner come Saturday.

Switzerland...FLUSH.

Albania and Latvia definitely brought the energy to kick this off! To the point that its making Lithuania feel very flat.

My final pre-show call; SAFE Greece Ukraine Norway SEMI-SAFE Armenia Albania Netherlands BORDERLINE IN Portugal Austria Latvia Iceland BORDERLINE OUT Lithuania Moldova Denmark Switzerland BYE Croatia Slovenia Bulgaria In terms of the borderlines, Portugal is the one I'm the most confident in that they could get through on jury votes alone. Latvia and Austria have elevated themselves in their performances enough to get through on the public vote and there's enough musicianship in there to not be completely mullered by the juries. My wildcard for the 10th place is Iceland since I think the juries will have lapped that up and I can see Denmark, Norway, Latvia, Lithuania and Netherlands all giving that a decent televote which should be enough to sneak in. Lithuania have been the victim of "death by broken staging" but was always on the bubble. Moldova could sneak in but I think Latvia beats it in the "fun song" category. Denmark can probably get a middling score across both and I think Switzerland's possible jury edge will be evaporated in a semi with Greece, Portugal, Netherlands and Iceland in it for jury catnip.

If you want a teaser then RTVE have been dropping some clips on twitter from the jury final feed.

Doesn’t feel real that this is happening tomorrow! The fan sites usually have a livestream up where you can get an audio feed of the jury semi final to hear if there’s any major screw ups or games that have been raised which will be from 8PM UK time tonight.

1 - Australia and Portugal ROBBED 2 - Please stop trying to make Sentimentai happen. But otherwise, pretty good results!

So now we've had all the rehearsals I'm thinking something like this Semi One 01 Greece 02 Ukraine 03 Norway 04 Armenia 05 Albania 06 Netherlands 07 Portugal 08 Austria 09 Switzerland 10 Latvia 11 Moldova 12 Lithuania 13 Denmark 14 Iceland 15 Croatia 16 Slovenia 17 Bulgaria Semi Two 01 Sweden 02 Poland 03 Australia 04 Czech Republic 05 Ireland 06 Cyprus 07 Serbia 08 Estonia 09 Finland 10 San Marino 11 Israel 12 Romania 13 Belgium 14 Georgia 15 Azerbaijan 16 Montenegro 17 Malta 18 North Macedonia Semi Two in particular is a nightmare predictions wise - 15 potential qualifiers going for 10 spots so wouldn't be surprised if I'm way off with these ones (I still think Serbia is this year's Telemoveis but it seems to have struck a chord in rehearsals). Assuming those qualifiers were the finalists then I'd see the final going like this 01 Sweden 02 United Kingdom 03 Spain 04 Ukraine 05 Italy 06 Norway 07 Greece 08 Poland 09 Czech Republic 10 Australia 11 Ireland 12 Albania 13 Serbia 14 Armenia 15 Netherlands 16 Cyprus 17 Latvia 18 Portugal 19 France 20 Estonia 21 Finland 22 Austria 23 San Marino 24 Switzerland 25 Germany

Spain get first half as well.

Greece and Portugal are the standouts of today's rehearsals from the clips released so far.

Italian organisation everyone! Sweden also having the nerve to show up with a circular instrument that can move from the melfest staging is also pretty juicy ngl!

Less information than we usually get due to them closing off the first rehearsals to the press but there doesn’t seem to have been any complete disasters so far this year. Portugal seems to have gone down particularly well from today.

Will Boris being the first sitting PM to receive a fixed penalty notice be enough to persuade my patch of suburban Hampshire to vote for people other than the Conservatives? My current suspicion is no but hopefully plenty of other places can see sense!

After dipping my toe in a new genre for me, we're very much back to that classic New Lexico sound that about 3 or 4 of you love to hear!

New Lexico is IN!

My take on Serbia is that the fans on twitter might think it's a laugh but virtually nobody beyond the balkans will get it at all. And that might be enough for Serbia some times but their only strong points are going to be coming from Montenegro, North Macedonia and maybe Romania. Rough guide is you need at least 100 points to qualify but even if all three of those countries give Serbia the double 12 then it'd still only be on 72 points (and I actually think Montenegro is the balkan vote magnet so that's not even very likely).

So in my habbit of having the very spot on go hand in hand with the complete missfire, I feel like I was one of the few bigging up France's potential on here but I really don't think I saw Italy as a major contender at all!

I know the Live On Tape was designed with covid in mind but its equally a circumstance that's not in the broadcaster's control so it feels like fair play for it to be used, assuming there's no change in circumstances.

So I've done my own simulation of the semis and this is broadly how I see the semis going (a very fine margin of error especially from 7th to 12th). Semi One 01 Greece 02 Norway 03 Albania 04 Ukraine 05 Netherlands 06 Portugal 07 Iceland 08 Austria 09 Moldova 10 Latvia 11 Armenia 12 Lithuania 13 Denmark 14 Switzerland 15 Croatia 16 Bulgaria 17 Slovenia Semi Two 01 Sweden 02 Poland 03 Australia 04 Estonia 05 Cyprus 06 Finland 07 Belgium 08 Czech Republic 09 Montenegro 10 Ireland 11 Romania 12 Malta 13 Georgia 14 Azerbaijan 15 Israel 16 North Macedonia 17 Serbia 18 San Marino

Well that was a rollercoaster to go through all in about five minutes. Very pleased to have nabbed a top 10 given I was in the lower top 30 quite late on! Congratuwelldone John! Definitely a worthy top 2 even if Hendinia was my pick for the win.

I'm hoping to do decently tonight - not really sure what the likely winners are but I think Kluminican Republic should do well!

The pop gals are really bringing it this month!

My votes are in!

new phone, hu dis?