Shall we do a round-up then?

Gosh, sorry for being so behind in the current round of Eurovision mayhem (except we’re not really because you will also notice we are including the results of tonight’s shenanigans here). Once again a little thing called life managed to get in the way of our ability to blog. But anyway, here we are, with a big stack of songs for Baku – beginning with the French effort. Now we rather put our foot in it last year when we suggested that the Gallic opera lad might just walk away with Eurovision honours – only for him to flounder hopelessly as a result of his frightened rabbit appearance on the night. We suspect that the lovely Anggun however will do no such thing with this odd but very likeable effort Echo (You and I). And is it just us or does this have shades of Georgia 2007 about it (which in turn means it has shades of Madonna?) You decide:

And so to Malta, who chose their entry last weekend in their usual understated, short (well by their standards anyway) final – which we once again struggled to make head or tail of. Who was that random woman playing piano at the start? Why did the introduction go on so long? Where was Chiara? How could Claudia Faniello possibly be snubbed again? Should we stop asking questions? Anyway, following a scoring process which was almost as exciting as the contest itself and seemed to feature random people from all over the continent, this man, Kurt Calleja, was chosen with his song This Is The Night. And you know what? Meh. Claudia was better. There’s nothing wrong with this song exactly – and we’ve made it abundantly clear in the past just how much we love Malta’s enthusiasm for all things Eurovision – but this is already shaping up to be a strong year, and we sense this song will struggle to make an impact. Eleventh place in the semi again, maybe?

So that was last week, now on to this week, and let’s start with Hungary.  And having produced one of our favourite songs of 2011 in the shape of Kati Wolf’s What About My Dreams (even if the lady herself – who appeared on tonight’s national final in verbose mode, was mildly terrifying), they haven’t done too badly this year either. This year’s effort is by Compact Disco (which might just be the best name for a band EVER) and is called Sound Of Our Hearts. We quite like it. That is all:

Norway, meanwhile, rejected the charms of folk band Plumbo (possibly because they sound like the sort of people you would call out when your toilet gets blocked) in favour of this chap, Tooji – aka ‘this year’s Eric Saade’ – with this song, Stay. And it is actually quite fabulous. Except of course it’s too soon for Norway to win the contest again. Isn’t it. Isn’t it?

And finally we come to Iceland, who have opted for a big dramatic ballad this year in the shape of Jonsi and Greta’s Mundu Eftir Mer. We’ll be honest, we weren’t expecting to like this. We didn’t like it last time Jonsi entered a ballad for Eurovision in 2004, in fact we hid under the sofa cushions and pleaded with the producers to make it stop. This, on the other hand, is a very pleasant surprise – it’s strong, it’s performed well, it has violins. Could we possibly have another Icelandic dark horse on our hands?

Hungary Likes The Wolf!

And it’s a warm welcome back to Hungary, who were noticeable by their absence from last year’s contest (given that the 2009 performance was possibly one of the worst things in Eurovision history we quite understand them taking a year off to lick their wounds). Not much more to say about Kati Wolf’s effort, mind, except that it’s rather better than their last effort Dance With Me, she’ll be singing in English on the night (hence something incomprehensible in Hungarian becomes What About My Dreams), and, er, she came 6th in Hungarian X Factor. It is worth pointing out at this stage that had we sent our sixth placed X Factor candidate this year we would have ended up with, er…..Wagner. Let’s not even go there…..

Make your minds up already!!!!

The ongoing saga of the Hungarian representative at this year’s Eurovision appears to have finally reached a satisfactory conclusion. Originally they planned to send a bubble-haired singer called Mark Zentai with a rather dodgy pop tune, until it became apparent it had been released previously. Along came Katya Tompos with the dullest ballad we’ve heard in the Eurovision arena for a long time, then she also withdrew. So….now we have Adok Zoltan with a little number called Dance With Me, and – it’s blimmin’ ace! Which leads us to the question: why didn’t Hungary just submit this song to start with and save themselves a whole lot of bother…….??