The Day After
As another May draws to a close, another Eurovision has ended, and this year's winner was Sweden.
I'm very happy with the result, as it was my favorite of the year. All the fan and betting hype turned out to be right. Russia had a well-deserved second place. Besides a fun, happy song and performance, they had a feel-good story behind it.
I got 7 out of my predicted top 10 right. Missing out were Greece, Ireland, and Ukraine. Greece surprisingly got their worst result in years, and while it's possible there was a political motivation (maybe people in certain countries were reluctant to spend money on Greece), it's also possible that people just tired of their efforts. Ireland's result was surprising considering their massive following and good draw, although we'll have to wait and see the split public/jury votes to see if there's a difference there. Ukraine did better than Greece and Ireland but was still out of the top 10. I guess there wasn't much of an audience connection with it.
Another Eurovision season comes to close, with a great result. Now all that's left to finish off is the wait for the split votes, and to see how well the winning song does. Hopefully "Euphoria" gets on US iTunes and Spotify.
posted by Goggle @ 3:00 PM
1 Comments:
Despite continuing to underestimate Albania and Estonia (didn't like them when they were selected, didn't think they would get out of the semifinals, didn't think they would do well in the final), and to a lesser degree Sweden (if I had actually looked at the download charts before the contest, I would have realized that they would win easily), I still got eight out of ten (putting in Greece and Ukraine, which always seems like the safe thing to do), and leaving out the aforementioned Albania and Estonia. I wasn't that confident that both Germany and Spain would finish in the top ten (as I predicted), but they did. I did well at the other end of the table, too, with four of the actual bottom six in my bottom six, and the two I missed, Malta and Denmark, I had at nineteenth and twentieth, respectively.
Overall, however, this has been a very disappointing year for me. It seems that more (good) songs than usual couldn't get out of the national finals, and many of the entries were relatively weak.
I keep rankings of my favorite songs by country during what I call the "modern" Eurovision era, which I define as starting in 2004, about the time I started following it, but also as the stagings have become more elaborate, and more important, the year of the first semifinal (which meant that any country that wanted to enter, could enter).
Anyway, for the period from 2004 to 2012 (considering countries that have sent at least three entries during that time), this year produced only one country favorite - Iceland (Serbia and Slovenia were close, though). At the other end, this year produced EIGHT of my LEAST liked songs by country during that time, including Georgia, Montenegro, Russia, San Marino, Ukraine, and United Kingdom (yes, I even liked Scooch more).
My complete list (sorted by year):
2012 Iceland
2011 Azerbaijan
2011 Denmark
2011 Netherlands
2011 Russia
2011 San Marino
2011 Slovenia
2010 Belgium
2010 France
2010 Georgia
2010 Germany
2010 Turkey
2009 Estonia
2009 Malta
2009 Portugal
2009 Switzerland
2009 United Kingdom
2008 Armenia
2008 Greece
2008 Montenegro
2008 Norway
2008 Poland
2008 Spain
2007 Belarus
2007 Cyprus
2007 Ireland
2007 Serbia
2006 Bosnia and Herzegovina
2006 Bulgaria
2006 Finland
2006 Lithuania
2006 Macedonia
2006 Romania
2005 Croatia
2005 Hungary
2005 Israel
2005 Moldova
2004 Albania
2004 Andorra
2004 Austria
2004 Latvia
2004 Sweden
2004 Ukraine
There is always next year, though I am less optimistic than usual, knowing that Bjorkman will have his hands all over everything. :(
Thanks for writing your blog.
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