FinalCylon

I strongly suspect Portugal. They had a very bland stage presence that would not have appealed to the masses. Sweden and Malta had excellent singing - that's how they qualified rightfully. Israel was a bit iffy, but touching enough that some people took notice.

On a scale from 5-10, which I did as the show progressed, and noting the qualifiers with "*": 10 *Turkey - Balkan songs win Eurovision so often because they sound awesome 9 *Sweden - great voice 9 *Iceland - great voice 9 *Malta - great voice 8 *Armenia - nice, but maybe some notes were botched 8 *Finland - standard fare for the finals 8 *Israel - touching but a bit boring 8 Andorra - oops, they didn't make it, pity 8 Macedonia - oops, they didn't make it and kinda generic rock 7 *Bosnia - a solid performance, maybe I should have given it an "8" 7 *Portugal - okay, but maybe this made it in with the help of the judges? 7 *Romania - started out great, but I felt it floundered into mediocrity 7 Belgium - looking good only because of the two acts before (Czech and Montenegro) 7 Switzerland - generic pop rock 6 Montenegro - the guy ruined it 6 Belarus - embarassing 5 Czech Republic - worse than embarassing 5 Bulgaria - like male cats yowling at each other Turkey was awesome, and I hope they win it, so I can get sick of that song rather than something less palatable. I think I understand Macedonia's entry. I've been to Macedonia, but I've been to Bulgaria a lot more, and there I know they love 70's and 80's dinosaur rock. If you go to a party there, the music you'll hear will likely be ancient American rock bands. So, I think Macedonia's taste for this just didn't translate to Europe as a whole. It made my cut at "8", but it was unremarkable. Bulgaria also has a taste for "chalga," Bulgarian folk-pop music, Balkan music, and so I was hoping for something of the same caliber as Turkey's entry. Alas, the Bulgarian entry was a complete disaster. The guy really sounded off-key. In general, falsetto runs from mediocre to horrible, and this was clearly on the horrible end of the scale. I think it's possible that this was a good but difficult song that was ruined by a bad performance, but it's hard to tell through the bad performance. This debacle reminds me of Azis, the bearded transsexual Bulgarian male who is so popular in Bulgaria - they sent him to Eurovision in 2006 and Bulgarians just couldn't understand their entry did so poorly in Eurovision. Although Balkan music rules, Bulgaria is sometimes a little too far off in its own realm in its Eurovision entries.

I was on Malta during the competition for their entry into Eurovision 2006, so I can give you a little backstory. Fabrizio Faniello's performance of "I do" had a technical problem (microphone too quiet for some seconds), so they let him repeat it after all the other entries. I thought it was the worst of Malta's choices and was horrified to have to hear it a second time, and I was horrified that it won for Malta, which I assumed was due to this double performance. Then I was horrified to have to hear it again for the actual Eurovision since it won on Malta. By the way, Eurovision is just huge on Malta. The family I was staying with explained that they are a small nation, just 400,000 people, so they regard this as their chance for some national exposure and for a chance for one Maltese to maybe make it big. I got the impression that everyone on the island was watching, and it was just the local competition for who gets to go to Eurovision. It seemed much more important to the people of Malta than other European countries with which I'm familiar.