RIP Dance and Erase You

Two countries chose/presented their songs for Eurovision this week. Cyprus chose "La La Love," my favorite of the bunch so far. France presented "Echo (You and I)," which is in the middle of the pack for me.

Finland and Ukraine selected finalists from their larger pool of entries and I will be sad to see "Erase You" from Finland and "Dance" from Ukraine go. Just imagine how a zombie themed performance would have turned out on the Eurovision stage!

Hungary had their first semifinal, from which four songs qualified, my favorite being "Vizio."

Iceland had their final semifinal. I think the best two songs qualified, but my favorite is still from the first semifinal.

Norway had their second semifinal, from which three songs qualified. "Ola Nordmann" and "Crush" are good, but I wish "Shapeshifter" or "You and I" had qualified instead of "Make It Better."

Next week: Belarus and Malta pick their songs, and more semifinals from Hungary, Norway, and Sweden!

I took another listen to the cut songs from the first Norwegian semifinal and "Elevator" stood out to me more on the second listen. What a shame that it didn't qualify.


It sounded a little bit to me like something a Korean girl group might record. It turns out that Dsign Music, who wrote the song (along with last year's "I Can" for the UK) have in fact written songs recorded by Korean girl groups, among many others.

One hit they wrote is "Genie" by Girls' Generation:


"Elevator" sounds maybe closest to "Pinocchio (Danger)" by f(x):


Oddly enough, f(x) also recorded "Dangerous", the demo of which seems to have been recorded by the first performer in last year's Melodi Grand Prix, Carina Dahl.

Super Scandinavian Saturday

This weekend only had 3 selection shows, all from Scandinavian countries and all on Saturday.

Denmark selected their entry, "Should have known better." Surprisingly, I kind of like it. It was one of the better songs in their selection and I prefer it over a lot of the other recent Danish entries. Definitely my favorite Eurovision '12 entry so far, but of course it's from a currently very shallow pool.

Iceland had their second semifinal, from which two songs qualified. Both are okay but not as good as last week’s.

Norway had their first semifinal. Three songs qualified, my favorite of which is "High on love."

Next week has a few more selection shows. A final in Cyprus (any of the 3 songs would be great) and semifinals in Finland, Hungary, Iceland, and Norway.

Beautiful Songs?

This weekend brought just a few semifinals. No more songs revealed or selected until next week, it seems.

Latvia had their second semifinal. Most of the qualifiers are mediocre. I prefer "She's a queen" and "Beautiful song" out of the qualifiers, but none of the songs performed are really special at all. Such a disappointment after last year, but maybe that was just an outlier.

Iceland had their first semifinal. I'm happy about "Mundu eftir mér" qualifying but I really wish "Leyndarmál" had also qualified, as it was my favorite from this. "Stattu upp" is okay but it somehow sounds a little too close to the Taio Cruz song "Dynamite."

Bulgaria had their semifinal. I'm happy with the results, as I really like half of the qualifiers. There's a good chance that they'll select a good song as their entry.

Next week should be very Nordic as Iceland and Norway have semifinals and Denmark selects their entry.

Happy New Year, New Songs 2012!

Is it time for EuroSunday again? Actually, it’s probably a little late.

There’s been a couple of singer selection shows to pick Eurovision performers but as always, since these shows don’t pick the songs, I won’t cover them.

Two entries have already been chosen. “Unbreakable” from Switzerland is a fine rock song. I’m not sure if it’s got enough in it to make it to the final yet, but the field is still open, and it’s a little more appealing than their “The Highest Heights” from 2009.

Albania chose “Suus,” a ballad that doesn’t seem like it goes anywhere with a lot of screaming. However, when listening to it I felt like it might be giving me a similar reaction to Ukraine’s 2010 and 2011 songs, which didn’t appeal to me at first but ended up being very good and successful by their final staged versions. The singer sure does have a powerful voice.

A few other countries have narrowed down their songs in televised semifinals. A few weeks ago, Belarus held a semifinal from which five songs qualified. I only like “We are the heroes” by Litesound, whose previous attempts I’ve also enjoyed. Latvia had their first semifinal and chose five songs to qualify, of which I only like “My World,” which is cute and has some potential.

Next week brings semifinals from Iceland and Latvia (there’s probably others too). Here’s to a good Eurovision 2012!