Eurovision 2018: Portugal. The Country

[Bill1978]

8, 10 and 12th May. In Lisbon Portugal

The three live shows will be hosted by Filomena Cautela, Sílvia Alberto, Daniela Ruah and Catarina Furtado.

43 countries competing. No LED.

Since it's pretty much Eurovision week, thought a thread should be started.

At the moment, I'm struggling to get excited for this year. And I am blaming the lack of appeal of the vast majority of the songs. And once again I am not a fan of the favourite going into the competition. Maybe after back to back disappointing winners (for me, anyway) I'm just not keen to see a threepeat.

But watch by the time of the first Semi airs, Ill probably me lapping up the excitement like a man lost in the desert for 40 days without water. seeing a puddle of water.

Edited May 5, 2018 by Bill1978

[Cosmic Muffin]

Thanks for starting this thread! I haven't heard all of the entries yet, but so far I don't really like them much. Netta from Israel is better than most I've heard, as are Spain and Iceland's entries. I hope things imrove.

[SnideAsides]

Netta is my least favourite entrant in several years. It's like someone in Israel heard "Bom Bom", that awful one hit wonder from a few years back, and challenged themselves to crank its terribleness up to eleven. Also not a fan of the funeral dirge that has somehow gotten France of all places to second in the betting odds.

Really hoping for an Estonian Italian opera win, but would settle for sexy Danish vikings, Albanian garage rock, or even Alexander fucking Rybak and his air instruments.

[Cosmic Muffin]

Oh, yeah, Estonia's opera singer is really good. 

Why are so many of the entrants/songs so bland this year?

[SnideAsides]

It's even extending to the spokespeople. SBS Australia has replaced Lee Lin Chin with Portuguese-Australian finance journalist Ricardo Goncalves. Who I do like, but this is total sacrilege.

[vavera4ka]

idk I feel like it's one of the best years ever. so many different genres, no clear favorite. Yes, Netta came into it as a one, but others have caught up.

I usually load all songs into a playlist and eliminate songs I don't like. Most of the time I end up with 15-20 songs. This time I only skip Netherlands (don't like country) and Spain (way too cheesy and I don't like guy's voice). The rest I listen over and over. Some I like better than others of course.

My fav - Greece screwed up with staging and didn't make it... that was sad. but I was ecstatic over Albania making it. As well as Serbia in the 2nd semi

We have so many "perennial qualifiers" miss it this time that it's making it interesting.

I'm rooting for Cyprus to win it all. Or Germany (I bawled first time I heard him sing live during the selection). Or Czechia. 

I was also mesmerized by Ukraine's beginning. Rising from coffin  piano.

Ieva singing to her husband gets to me every time.

Slovenia makes me wanna dance every time

Vikings have some of the most beautiful harmonies (so did Georgia)

Semi 1 was super competitive. I don't remember that many quality competitors in one semi ever.

Hungary is epic.

Robots from San Marino and their "justice for Valentina" sign during rehearsals may be the best behind the scenes moment

Sweden is not my cup of tea but their "tanning bed" contraption looks SICK on stage.

I can go on. (see what di did there? lol)

Edited May 11, 2018 by vavera4ka

[HartofDixie]

The finalists for tomorrow night:

[SnideAsides]

I think that's the thing. There's no truly outstanding songs this year the way there were with, say, Euphoria or Rise Like a Phoenix or Waterloo or [insert Irish winner here], but pretty much everyone's given us an 8/10 song except Russia and Iceland, who both died in the semis (though I do hope Mr Iceland comes back in future; it seems like he did the best he could with shitty material). Add that the few countries who had the big favourites have some pretty disappointing staging (in particular Israel, who fell into the same trap as Italy last year where the song was just too insane to ever translate well to the stage), and it's pretty much anyone's game.

If I had to pick a winner though, Moldova. It's drawn the plum position of 19th (since they added the semi, every winner has drawn 10th, 11th, or somewhere between 17th and 24th), it usually gets full points from Romania in the same way that Greece and Cyprus always exchange points, it's going to get the bulk of the ex-Soviet points (the only other ex-Soviets in the final are Ukraine, Estonia, and Lithuania, but none of the pro-Russia countries are going to vote for Ukraine and Estonia are singing in Italian for some reason), and it has unquestionably the best stage performance of the year. Plus, like, IT'S TIME for them to win. It's shocking to me that France and Ireland are leading the betting at the moment.

Edited May 12, 2018 by SnideAsides

[vavera4ka]

Btw. If anyone is interested in the magic behind Moldova’s staging

its insane!!!

[Mumbles]

Liked Albania, Finland, the Netherlands. I can see Germany, Ireland, Norway, and Sweden doing very well. Curious if the UK gets some sympathy votes because of the incident on the stage.

Liked the Australian one but that may be because it's highly derivative of Bruno Mars' "Just the Way You Are."

Edited May 12, 2018 by Mumbles

[SnideAsides]

Not one of my favourite winners, that's for sure. A speed rewatch/ranking of all the winners (and the song that lost via tiebreaker in 1991) puts it at 48th out of 67.

1969's "Un Jour, Un Enfant" was 1st. Don't judge me.

[vavera4ka]

I'm happy for Germany being that high. 

Albania too. THAT. VOICE. IMO best voice in the competition. Yes. Even better than opera girl.

The winner... i guess expected more or less. I would have preferred Cyprus. But i guess it's kinda better for them, the biggest arena in Cyprus is 6k ppl. No way that's enough to host Eurovision in this time and age.

Was unpleasantly surprised by the leader of jury vote. Really? Austria? come on. It's a (quite good) mash up of Take Me To Church and Human.  It's almost as if jury was playing a game of "let's sink the favorites and competition and give it to  random act" but randomly chose the same one lol

[Mumbles]

Quote

Was unpleasantly surprised by the leader of jury vote. Really? Austria? come on. It's a (quite good) mash up of Take Me To Church and Human.

Thank you! I was wondering why "Human" was going through my head all night and realize that's why.

I really love this competition and am glad the US isn't in it. We'd manage to take it too seriously and it would lose its charm.

[die Frau]

I'm happy that Germany did so well. Nobody expected it to come in first. That it placed as well as it did is a win.

Apparently Austria was even less expected to do well and they nearly won. Strange. I guess the song  was inoffensive enough, but I forgot it almost immediately. That was the case for quite a few of the songs, such as Bulgaria. Every time they played their clip I felt like I was hearing it for the first time...

 

I appreciated Denmark's staging, but the singer strangely wasn't dramatic enough. I wonder if he was having an off night.

I wanted to like The Netherlands' song once I found out he was from The Common Linnets. It sounded authentically like country music. I don't really like country music. I might see what else the singer has to offer.  

Otherwise the only ones I might listen to again would be perhaps Italy, Germany (maybe for sentimental reasons, but it was okay) and the winner from last year. His performance style is odd, but entertaining and I actually liked both of his songs.