Terminal 3.... The Eurovision Blog

Well as we already know Albania have chosen their song for Moscow 2009, but over the next 3 and a bit months it really kicks in before the final song is chosen on Saturday 14th March. The next song to be made public is Turkey on New Years Eve when Hadise will perform her song live on a specially produced programme on TRT. With Greece and The Netherlands having also announced their singers and both Malta and Bulgaria with heats currently ongoing and the Belarus Eurofest Semi Final on December 15th,The United Kingdom officially become the 8th country to start their televised productions with Finland starting the week after and then Iceland, with Bosnia announcing their singer and song on 12 January. Towards the end of January we have the first of the Norwegian Melodi Grand Prix heats, then comes the Romanian Heats and Andorran Final before Romania, Cyprus,Denmark and Finland hold their National Finals.So that would appear to be January sorted with at least another 5 performers and songs...

The first song for the 2009 Eurovision Song Contest has been chosen and the pleasure of announcing first goes to Albania. The song is called "Me Merr ne Enderr" and is sung by Kejsi Tola and will be the sixth Albanian Eurovision Song Contest Entry. Personally I think form seeing the live performance that the performance needs some work and her voice is not the strongest I have heard, but she comes across as enthusiastic and with the extra work could give a good performance in Moscow. The song is very ethno-dance and following the success of some of the dance acts in Belgrade could go down well with the fans. But we will see.

Well after a night out with some friends recapping on old Eurovisions, well 1985 to be honest we decided to watch the videos for the Finnish entrants in the Finnish National Finals for Eurovision 2009 and we decided unanimously that Waldo's People have got our vote. The song I think is perfect for a more modern Eurovision and following the songs from Macedonia, Iceland and Bulgaria in 2008 then I think Finland could stand a good chance with this as their entry.

Spain opens it's internet voting for it's 2009 entry at midday tomorrow (19th December) CET via myspace. 978 entries were received, but of that figure, amazingly only 455 entries were eligable! So I suppose the task to find your favourite is less daunting now. You can vote 20 times each day, but you can only vote for one artist 5 times a day. So let's get voting! Would be nice to get a warm country for 2010!

Well, it looks like the Eurovision does operate in the real world! Even though San Marino , Lithuania and Latvia had stated their intentions to participate in the 2009 contest, it looks like the credit crunch has finally started biting at the door of Eurovision . Earlier rumours surrounding the Russia-Georgia situation had given rise to doubts over Latvia and Lithuania's participation anyway, but this week's news stories make great pains to state that it is all about the lack of funds. It seems that San Marino have confirmed their withdrawal and it seems to have been accepted. There's no further news from Lithuania, but Latvia confirmed that they had made a request for a withdrawal. However, some news sites seem to think that the EBU may look towards helping out the Latvian broadcaster with a payment plan or similar. Even though I always look forward to hearing the Latvian and Lithuanian entries each year, I hope that the EBU keep it nice and simple. Not enough mone...

T he big rumours coming out of Ireland at the moment is that there has been a high level RTE approach to their most successful Eurovision artist - Johnny Logan. Having won as an artist in 1980 with "What's another year?" and in 1987 with "Hold me know", Logan then penned the 1992 winner "Why me?" sung by Linda Martin. Despite dominating the contests in the 90's, Ireland have fallen on stony ground lately and sunk to their lowest last year by being represented by a Turkey puppet! Their last good result being in 2006, when the well-known Brian Kennedy gained a top 10 finish with "Every song is a cry for love." I hope Johnny does accept the invitation as I think it would be good to see how far Eurovision has changed since his wins. We have had a number of past female winners trying to get another win, but no past male winner. So far, those females have attracted some votes, but haven't been able to replicate the win. It would be good ...

Good news arrives from Spain! Even though they weren't that succesful in the voting in Belgrade, the bosses in Spain are yet again looking towards the internet community to help choose their entry for Moscow. Yet again, people will be able to vote for their favourite song at www.myspace.com/eurovision2009 . The voting will start on 19th December and run until 19th January. A day later, 50 acts will be announced as having reached the semi-finals, which will take place sometime in February. Congratulations to Spain on yet another good choice!

So Terry Wogan has finally retired having damaged the reputation of the Eurovision Song Contest in the UK for far too many years. So, considering that the UK seem to be trying to take the pre -selection a bit more seriously by having Lord Andrew Lloyd- Webber help, who do they decide to take over? GRAHAM NORTON!! WHY?! For one, Graham Norton has no experience at commentating. Two, I doubt Graham Norton has any experience of being serious! So we'll be subjected to more poor jokes, tasteless innuendos as the BBC moves the commentating more away from the music. How can Terry Wogan complain about the contest moving away from being a Music contest, when the BBC has failed to treat it as such for so long! So here's to many more years of Eurovision being a total joke in the UK!