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It's Eurovision week! How will you watch the competition? Which song is your favourite? What are your predictions?
The first semi-final is tonight, second semi-final on Thursday, and the grand final on Saturday.
Bookies currently have the Netherlands as their favourite to win.
Every year I don't listen to the songs (apart from the song from my country) before the competition, because I want the live show to be my first exposure to them. I want to be surprised :-D
After a bit of snooping in your comment history; are you from Russia? One of the best songs this year in my opinion, and I think you have a very good chance of winning the whole thing!
You could have just snooped in my user bio :-P
But yeah, Russia. Sergey Lazarev is one of the few Russian pop stars who actually have some talent, and I hope he will get a nice score, but I doubt that he will be allowed to win, because politics.
I honestly think that Little Big should've gone instead. They are sure to make a good Eurovision-worthy show, as well as a catchy beat. To say nothing about viral internet video points.
TIL we have user bios. :-o
Indeed:
https://tildes.net/~tildes.official/blf/user_bios_added_you_can_write_a_short_bio_that_will_be_visible_on_your_user_page
How will you watch the competition?
I won't be watching the first semi-final live this time, because it clashes with the D&D campaign I'm running on Tuesdays. Instead I will be half-watching it tomorrow, probably while playing Civilization on my laptop.
I'll be watching on Thursday though, when my native Norway is competing for a spot in the grand final. My prediction is we'll either do very well (top 10 in the grand final), or we'll fail to qualify from the semi-final, and it all comes down to how well Fred Buljo performs his joik.
No matter if we qualify or not, I'm inviting some friends over to watch the grand final with me. It should be fun anyway.
What song is your favourite?
Albania: Jonida Maliqi - Ktheju Tokës. I just love everything about this, and I really hope they let the orchestra play during the performance. The bookies expect this to not even qualify to the grand final though. Oh well.
What are your predictions?
I think the Netherlands and France are over-rated by the bookies, and might both end up outside the top 5. Iceland and Serbia will both do better than expected, and one of them might even win. Germany and United Kingdom will both end up in the bottom 5, maybe even the bottom 2.
I never listen to the songs ahead of time, as I think that's just wrong. :) Unless I'm mistaken, the competition used to prohibit any sort of public (i.e. radio) play before the event, and I think it worked much better when the songs were new for almost all viewers. Nowadays, of course, you have national competitions to choose the acts, and YouTube and social media to promote the people, so it would be impossible to police that, but I think it's a little unfair towards those acts who can't afford to have a big promotional machine behind them. But then again, it's never really been that much about the music, has it? Or maybe it was in the 90s, but then we had Ireland winning every year.
Anyway, every year we get together with friends for the final, prepare an insane amount of food and snacks, maybe a drink or two*, play board games and stay in the garden during the day if the weather permits, and then just enjoy the campy comedy that unfolds once the broadcast starts. The semi-finals, I just watch with my wife.
My predictions, despite having practically no idea who is participating: Most of my favourites won't make it to the final. The UK won't score many points. Russia will be competing for victory, primarily with points from the televote. France will have a song in French, but maybe with a few words of English. Sweden will give us an immaculately crafted and annoyingly catchy pop song. But even then, after enough awkward moments with this year's hosts and some absolutely lame jokes that the broadcast delivers us, everyone will secretly hope that Sweden wins again so that we at least get their hosts and production values next year. And finally, despite whatever they do with the voting system, we'll know the winner long before the vote ends. And as a bonus prediction for this year: there will be at least one awkward moment somewhere when the current geopolitical situation in the host country is mentioned, and somewhat clumsily muted by the broadcast.
* One year I realised that I had somehow from my travels acquired spirits from almost every country participating in the competition, and since I don't really drink I had them just lying around in the pantry, so I did what any reasonable person would do: decide to take a shot every time a song came on from a country that I had a bottle from. I got about a third into the first semi-final when I came to the conclusion that this was not one of my brightest ideas ever.