The ESC now takes a full week to run, with two semi-finals, scheduled for today and Thursday, before a grand final is broadcast around the world on Saturday, May 11. Like last year, 37 countries will participate, with 26 competitors expected. to participate in the final. And just like last year, intense debates took place in the run-up to the competition about the dividing lines between music, art and politics. But unlike last year, no clear favorite has yet emerged during rehearsals.
Bookmaker Paddy Power currently has Croatia, Switzerland, Ukraine, Italy and the Netherlands with the shortest odds of winning. Croatian singer-songwriter Marko Purišić, known as Baby Lasagna, represents with “Rim Tim Tagi Dim”, an ethno-dance banger with Balkan Adam Ant vibes. Switzerland, meanwhile, seems to have finally learned their lesson after what seems like a decade of boring ballads and sent up Nemo with “the Code” – a number with lots of dramatic strings that could work very well with good staging. scene.
Ukraine sent Alyona Alyona and Jerry Heil – two of the country’s most famous artists – with “Teresa & Maria,” a song written to emphasize that it is our actions that define us. Italy, for its part, could well repeat its 2021 victory with “La Noia”, an extremely catchy number by Angelina Mango. And the Netherlands showed off its quirkiness with Joost Klein’s ‘Europapa’ – a lyrical ode to the Schengen area, as well as a very moving song about the tragic loss of one’s parents at an early age. It has a deeply 1990s Euro-dance sound; a sort of reflection that Vengaboys must eventually navigate the turbulent waters (canals?) of life to become Vengamen.
“(The competition) is very open. . . I see the Netherlands and Croatia doing well, but it’s hard to predict how the juries will affect that,” said Paul Jordan, better known as Dr. Eurovision. Indeed, while the semi-finals are now decided exclusively by how the public votes, the final decision is split between public and jury votes. However, the “Rest of the World” vote, which began last year, stands, giving the public a little more impact on the final result, with 37 jury votes compared to 38 televised votes, or around 50.6 percent.
The only change this year is that the voting window is longer. Viewers in participating countries can start voting from the start of the first performance of the final, instead of waiting for queues to open at the end, while those watching around the world now have ‘a 24-hour window before the grand finale — a system that Swedish organizers say worked well with their national selection show Melodifestivalen.
To illustrate how public and jury votes can differ, Jordan cited Finland’s performance last year, when Käärijä’s, uh, quirky “Cha Cha Cha” received the maximum possible 12 points from 18 countries, but still finished in second place. in Sweden, because the juries were not as enthusiastic. On the contrary, Finland made the madness this year by sending Windows95Man with “No Rules!” ” and a performance that involves what I can only describe as a pyrotechnic catapult.
Politico
