Eurovision 2017

It approaches.

http://www.eurovision.tv/

Here's your YouTube playlist of the entries:

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLmWYEDTNOGUL3Q6L4o5jwyPSjWHbRfrAq

Your three hosts!

http://www.eurovision.tv/save-files/resizes/90/da/b8/80/eb/14/1b/3d/7c/cc/e2/a0/9f/89/cd/60/ILS_9280.jpg

Oleksandr Skichko, Volodymyr Ostapchuk, and Timur Miroshnychenko by name.

Pretty sure you cut and pasted those names and didn't type them from memory, Ned...

Rather.

All male presenting team is unusual.

will give all these a listen today
running order for the semis has just been announced http://esctoday.com/143533/eurovision-2017-semi-finals-running-order-revealed/

italys is soooooo good!

Italy's is indescribable.

playlist links to the music video, but the live seems a bit more milder in a good way! love the orchestra chanting ALLEZ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmpc3fcrNJQ

fan service is not the ESC's best look but it's very far from the worst worst so I guess I'm happy to see San Marino and Moldova resurrect their most memetic stars

other crucial fact: Romania's entry is called "Yodel It!"

Really pissed I wasn't able to get tickets this year (grrrr, fuming) because I was looking forward to going OFF to Montenegro, who have provided the nearest thing the contest will ever see to "What What (In the Butt)". Also into Iceland, Israel, Montenegro, Azerbaijan and, weirdly, Cyprus.

So I've been binging on all the rehearsals and more from last week (and a lot of the promo stuff for the last few weeks -- the Eurovision team are kinda killing it on the social media front, they know how to feed the beast with all the formal clips and interviews and promo things and etc.)

Pretty much at this point if Norma John from Finland fully dark horse it to the top I will be pleased as punch; it's easily my favorite song by a mile, plus a pretty great actual video to go with it, and the duo have amazingly dry senses of humor in their promos and the like. Belgium's entry is my number two in studio form as is but I can't see it getting anywhere as a live performance based on the rehearsal clips.

Beyond that I have a clutch of entries I enjoy well enough (Montenegro, Australia, Iceland, Germany, Denmark, Macedonia, some others) and others which I don't exactly but have their staging/meme quality down (Moldova, Romania, Italy). If Spain's entry ranks high anywhere the night of the final I will throttle someone.

Half hour to go!

I quite like Monatik.

yo

get to Montenegro already

I like Belgium's entirely monotone effort tbh.

Belgium not really bringing the attitude xp

She looks distraught for no apparent reason,

MONTENEGRO TIME

*Pumps fist*

I hope he sang better last night

very much feeling the presenters tonight

Yeah, I think if I heard the Belgian one out I might quite like it. Whereas Montenegro had the old-school Eurovision fun factor.

great real names: The Australian entrant is called Isaiah Firebrace

Azerbaijan is good in this company.

AZE is good but I keep humming Roisin Murphy "Primitive" over the chorus

Azerbaijan <3 <3

Fire/desire/higher!

She p much hits her notes, though, I think only two or three have done so before her?

(Poland, that is)

bit sad that "can sing" is going to be enough to get these people through

most famous living Moldovan?

He has been working on that riff for nine years and is finally ready to unleash.

Nothing wrong with Armenia but I miss Inga and Anush

I liked Armenia, but it needed to be bigger sounding, I think. Having said that, I think Armenia and Azerbaijan are the only two I'm that fussed about seeing go into the next round. So obv they'll both get knocked out.

feel a bit churlish to write this but I'd like Latvia a lot better if they had a song

Could do with some decent Ukrainian pop as a palate cleanser tbh.

Expected rank according to Betfair markets, snapshot right after the reminders:

Top ten: SWE, ARM, POR, MDA, AZE, BEL, GRE, FIN, AUS, CYP
Then: LAT, GEO, SLO, ISL, MNE, ALB, CZE

(To be precise, that is not necessarily the actual ranking order of the entries as such, but a ranking of the probability of going through. A ranking of the probabiliby of winning the semifinal might turn out slightly different.)

feel Sweden are due a DNQ maybe just wishful thinking

ISL has a decent shot I'd say

They can have the place of MDA, which I found pretty unbearable

Georgia should probably be ok.

Jamala is so fucking good.

The new one is very good.

Yeah, definite highlight of the evening right there.

Good god, Spain.

Whoops, I missed POL in the market ranking. They were at #11, top non-qualifier.

So market was 9 for 10, had Finland instead of Poland.

her dress is astonishingly hideous :0

everyone is being very wogan abt hungary which was excellent

Yes, absolutely otm.

An Aussie just mooned during a live performance. I hope it was KBP

See what happens when you invite them to appear in Eurovision.

It paid off

Ten to midnight and 42 points reveals to go...

lol, San Marino only gave 5 to Italy.

dot worry. we know what will happen with cyprus and greece

oh go away portugal

wth Norway

ugh Portugal

Fuck this, I'm watching the football.

Wonder who will get 12 points from Greece...

haha

Croatia is getting very few points which can only be due to the singer's fucking horrible personal opinions. I think it'd score high otherwise.

portugal fuckin sucks

still no points for Spain

I always wondered what happened to Hinge & Bracket

We Send Australia our crims and they give is 12 pts haha

Brexit, Trump and now this.

Jesus, Australia got next to nothing,

An Aussie just mooned during a live performance.

fucking hell

how do they assign specific numbers of points from the votes? it wasn't like this in my day

I hate the viewers vote.

Everyone pissed off Portugal won?

I think it's quite good considering they've never won it. Crap song tho..

OMG, Rockism triumphs at Eurovision.

Portugal guy speech belongs on /r/lewronggeneration

haha I knew that speech would get a reaction

he's been ill

viewers' vote was p good down-table (viz hungary)

also i like the way it makes countries leap up the places, it's exciting

Yeah, voting stage is much better than it used to be

Great to see Hungary coming through at the end. idk how Europe decided Australia was worse than Spain but Austria getting nothing was very welcome.

I had Isaiah at 11/4 to finish in the top ten and he just about held on.

oh right the voter points are still based on the ranking 1-12 points

I remember when I was first watching all the songs/videos two months back I was thinking that Portugal had the virtue of being thoroughly atypical compared to the rest of the field, if nothing else, and here we are. I do wonder how much the medical backstory played into a sympathy vote and all.

Great to see Hungary coming through at the end.

That one quietly grew on me over time.

My two real favorite results -- Belgium placing fourth (would have loved it to beat Moldova at least but I'll take the rest) and Spain getting so completely trashed.

his backstory and portugal's -- and he sang it really well and the arrangement was nice (very 50s strings, like an eartha kitt record or something)

i fear it will create a tsunami of badness next year, assuming the second korean war doesn't take us there first

As I said upthread, it reminded me of Harry Nilsson a bit, but it was a pastiche though, it kept threatening to turn into another song.

So per this article on the winner:

http://www.lavozdegalicia.es/noticia/television/2017/05/12/historia-erasmus-portugues-atiborro-alucinogenos-mallorca-favorito-ganar-eurovision/00031494588376440908522.htm?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=twgen

...this Google-translated detail:

The Portuguese Salvador Sobral left his country in 2011 with destination to Mallorca . He did it with an Erasmus scholarship, with the clear intention of polishing his training in Psychology. The problem is that the Balearic night confessed to him, and as he himself acknowledged, he ended up walking on the faculty and cramming with hallucinogenic mushrooms and other drugs.

This is not a complaint, mind you, if anything I'm all "Well, yes, sounds right."

Makes you wonder why the songs is so bad.

Then you find out his sister wrote it.

women lol

So far, this is the only place on the internet that has any positive reaction to the winner.

Has the word 'Politics' been mentioned this time around at all?

If not, good and hray!

Like Australia giving the UK 12 points, you mean?

I liked the winner! It stood out from the vaguely EDM songs, and also from the wilder ones. I tend to prefer whatever Eastern Europe comes up with, but this year they were pretty toned down (my family says that there were wilder ones that didn't make the finals). But yay Portugal, which I just returned from last night as it happens.

Latest discovery from Eurovision not-2017:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkiJlyXaGJI

Could imagine this turning up on a Finders Keepers comp

I vaguely know one of the Australian jurors and I am utterly baffled that she would have gone for the UK entry. She's a singer/songwriter/comedian and the bland UK entry is not what I would have expected would have tickled her fancy. Our jury's fondness for the UK's awful entries is a worry but at least we didn't give anything to Electro Velvet, but then again other country's juries' overfondness for our entry this time is a worry too - roundly rejected by the televoters, the juries propped it up to a bizarre extent for such a blah song (Dami Im was a blah song too but she sang the shit out of it to the extent that I would never bother listening to the studio version as the live version completely blows it away).

On the other hand, the Australian televoters once again did themselves proud and displayed their preference for fun songs, giving 12 and 10 to arguably the most fun songs in the final: Moldova and Romania. Last year our 12 and 10 also went to uptempo fun songs: Belgium's "What's The Pressure" and Bulgaria's "If Love Was a Crime". And in 2015, we went for uptempo Sweden and very fun Serbia in 1 and 3, and Belgium was 2nd (not uptempo but extremely high quality and too good to not be given points).

probably no need for a 2018 thread just yet
but whigfield has made it to the final 10 for denmarks entry

can't think of a better reason to kick off the 2018 season!