Cyprus: Ivi Adamou – La La Love

You can tell straightaway from the title that this is one of the songs aiming for the jury vote, right? No. No, I didn’t think so.

Well, they spent some money on  the video trying to make the song more interesting, they created an instrumental midsection in order to do something dramatic dance-wise (with pyro and a wind machine probably) and the song (Generic Pop Bland) is catchy enough. So I expect to see this again Saturday. I might even sing along to it. Please stop me.

Cyprus: Christos Mylordos - San Aggelos S'Agapisa

Christos Mylordos... the only guy who could take the title of “awesomest name ever” away from Dino Merlin. Exactly the kind of tortured song (sung in Greek, if I’m not mistaken) that I love. I’m hoping for an appropriate stage setting, some excellent backing vocals and some charisma. And the second mention of angels in one night. Dear lord!

Cyprus: John Lilygreen & the Islanders – Life looks better in spring

Oh, Tom Dice is back. But he’s prettier and he might be winning something this time. This bores me to tears though, I’m sorry... It’s not even got a manic violinist, it’s the least they could have done!

Cyprus – Christina Metaxa – Firefly

Christina comes to Eurovision with the mission to show that “'teenagers have the strength to set targets and follow their inner light” You know, in my opinion teenagers should hang around on the street, get drunk, have sex and be depressed, not follow their inner light. Who knows where it might lead them! The teenage mind is a scary place… best to stay far away from it. For some reason the promo video looks midieval, probably because teenagers back then also had to set targets and follow their inner light. Heartfelt ballad sung by a beautiful woman number 157, perhaps she can share Poland’s gospel choir. Meh.

Cyprus, FYR Macedonia and Portugal

Cyprus sends Evdokia Kadi with Femme Fatale, a song in Greek about … well, about a femme fatale probably. There’s no way to know for sure because I don’t speak Greek, they could be singing their shopping list. It does sound quite sexy though. The Cypriots have something with French titles it seems after they sent Evridiki last year with “comme ci comme ça”. Now allow me to rant for a second about how Evridiki should’ve made it to the final. She should have, it wasn’t fair, I tell you, it wasn’t fair. And you know what, this song should make it to the final as well. I think it’s funny, it’s original, there’s a woman being adored by a bunch of –probably- gay men on their knees, there’s a clothes change and who knows, there might even be a fire/desire rhyme… only in Greek.



FYR Macedonia has always qualified from the Semi-Final and that’s not always on merit, sometimes it was (Tose Proeski –ESC 2004), sometimes it just boggled the mind (Mojot Svet -ESC 2007). They’re one of the countries that could send a farting sheep and still make the top ten. This year –despite the absence of a farting sheep (I didn’t say it was a necessity, did I)- they should do so again even though they send a “genre” (Eurovisioned pop-rap) that doesn’t usually do well at Eurovision. Tamara, Vrčak & Adrijan sing Let me love you, a song about love or sex depending on which gender is talking. But at least they’re enthusiastic about it. The whole thing looks rather messy (they’re too cool not to be messy), the “rappers” seem to forget their whole macho act once they start dancing (which is nice) and there’s a lone backing singer who apparently failed at dance class because he just stands behind the microphone looking lost. Or perhaps he’s too cool to be all choreograph-y and stuff. That’ll be it. I just hope these guys don’t do too well, because I’m not in the mood for 43 R&B/rap songs in next year’s contest. I think I’d even prefer 43 turkeys.



Portugal ends our second semi final. They're sending Vânia Fernandes with Senhora Do Mar (Negras Águas) . A catchy title if ever I heard one. It means “lady by the sea” which makes sense once you start thinking about it. This is Bombastic Ballad number 250 and it’s another beauty. You can tell from the music and Vania’s facial expressions that this is Tragedy with a capital T. She’s miserable and it’s probably something to do with a guy. Fantastic! Portugal generally does bad at Eurovision but that’s mainly because they’ve hardly ever sent anything decent. Two recent examples? Amar (2005) and Coisas de nada (2006). For some reason there’s not a decent video clip to be found of this song, so it loses some of its power in the bad sound, but hey… if she can pull off the high notes live, she deserves a place in the final.


And that’s it for the second semi-final.
Of these 19 songs 10 will qualify to join the top 10 from the other semi and the 5 automatic qualifiers in the Grand Final. From those 25 songs the winner will be chosen. It’ll either be a Bombastic Ballad, a turkey, a political conspiracy vote or a trashy dance song -probably something to do with the devil-. I can’t wait.
Still to come: Spain, the UK, Germany, France and Serbia. Well, and the actual shows of course.