Colm

Here's my take on the whole thing. In general, I am really pleased with the results. Not because my favourite won but because some of the results were unpredictable. Bulgaria winning is great. I didn't really get into the song until the live shows brought it to life. I like the mix of genres, which seems to be the key to winning Eurovision now. A first time winner is always good because it gives hope to other countries that haven't won. We also needed a Balkan win because they often struggle to attend due to internal budgeting issues. A contest held on their doorstep should help more of them come back - North Macedonia might see a way back and I hope Montenegro stay in the competition. I assume Romania and Moldova will enter next year given their success this year. Speaking of which - Romania's result is also incredibly pleasing. Another song with multiple genres - although the juries didn't see fit to rewarded it very much at all. Fantastic televote for them too. For two countries to come back and excel to such a level is also wonderful. They didn't come back to make up the numbers. Whether it was the expansion of the national juries to 7 members and for 2 of those 7 to be from the age group 18 to 25 that made the difference to the Bulgarian jury, it feels like something changed this year. We needed a new era when unpredictable songs can do very well. It was also great that the public and the jury agreed on the best song - if only to stem the flow of toxic spite on Youtube and Twitter about the televote winner being the "real winner" that we had to endure when Nemo and Loreen won. Some other thoughts. It seems that Italy can do no wrong. While I don't really dislike Italy - I certainly loved them a lot more between 2017 and 2021 - they could send anything from almost any genre and because it's in Italian Europe will throw points at it. Their last nine finishes - 6 5 2 1 6 4 7 5 5. The UK should take a break. Hear me out. This year they tried something different. It didn't work. There just seems to be something of a mismatch between what the UK sends and what the voting public of Europe find entertaining. And that's fine. That's not an indication of the quality of the entry - just that it doesn't work in Eurovision Just take a break for a few years and spend a while thinking about a different approach. The standard of staging was much higher this year. There weren't many bad ones. I've made no secret about this but I think this is the weakest year since I started following the contest to this level in 2018. Finland was the only one that gave me proper Eurovision vibes. I liked Sweden a lot too. That was kind of it. There were some I admired - like Romania, Bulgaria and the UK. Finland just made my heart sing. They have put the work in, and deserve a victory soon. France too but France is internally selecting and that comes across like they're trying too hard when they almost engineer their entry. Perhaps like Switzerland and Austria, they need to change genre before they get their victory. Greece are hungry for it too - although I failed to see how Ferto was the path to success. Also...I said this a few months ago. I got half of my wish.

It was definitely one of the songs expected to get less than 10 points.

How so?

Vote rigging scandal! :O

1 Finland 2 Romania 3 Sweden 4 Lithuania 5 Australia 6 UK 7 Croatia 8 Bulgaria 9 Czechia 10 Germany

This is the dark horse.

Yep

Jurys.

This Lithuania guy sorted his vocals out. Good performance.

Pete sounded tired

❤️

This overrated pile of rubbish.

AI slop shirt

It's a terrible year

I love the music in this.

Still a great result if it goes top 5

It's swing shite

Bulgaria now 3rd in the odds to win.

Serbia sounding like 10th place

She does an incredible job with a decent song.

I don't like this Ukraine song at all

Greece Staging 10/10 Charisma 10/10 Song 3/10

I feel Belgium is on course for zero televotes.

So far, so mid

This is fresh from the microwave.