Terminal 3.... The Eurovision Blog

So with a few more countries added, here is the current top 10 from votes cast....... 10th France 7pts 9th Greece 10pts 8th Andorra 11pts 7th Norway 24pts 6th Denmark 28pts 5th Iceland 29pts 4th Finland 31pts 3rd Turkey 32pts 2nd UK 33pts and leading at the moment is........ 1st Malta 51pts As before, feel free to leave your own votes in the comments section. If you have voted previously, it would be useful if you told us that you'd voted before and which comment in the previous blog is yours. Thanks and enjoy!

Colin and I have composed our own Top 10's form the 20 songs already chosen and here they are:- Colin's 1 - Malta 2 - Turkey 3 - Finland 4 - United Kingdom 5 - Poland 6 - Denmark 7 - Germany 8 - Iceland 9 - France 10 - The Netherlands Paul's 1 - Malta 2 - United Kingdom 3 - Iceland 4 - Finland 5 - France 6 - Slovenia 7 - Germany 8 - Poland 9 - Cyprus 10 - Denmark I swapped the placings for Eurovision points and at the time with 20 songs chosen our Top 10 is:- 1 - Malta 2 - United Kingdom 3 - Finland 4 - Iceland 5 - Turkey 6 - Poland 7 - France 8 - Germany 9 - Denmark 10 - Slovenia So if our tastes are anything to go by (probably not!) we'll be visiting Valletta in May 2010! As more countries announce their entrants, we'll obviously update it. If anyone would like to add their top 10 to the comments page, we'll add their votes to the total. So if you do participate, keep checking back for new blogs on this subject as new countries are added.

With 20 countries already having chosen their representatives and the song they will sing it is quite clear that the most popular genre of music in 2009 is the ballad. A genre of music which appears every year in some form or other, but on a much smaller scale seems to have taken over the popularity which had been taken over by the dancy/pop tune. The ballad I would say has not been this popular since the early 1990's. With that in mind the ballad is definately making a comeback in 2009 and with nearly half of the songs already being chosen being one. United Kingdom, France, Iceland, Denmark, Poland, Cyprus, Malta and Lithuania are to date sending ballads and I think they are all pretty darn good. So why is the ballad making a comeback in 2009? I wonder whether that it is due to the comeback of the juries in 2009 and that most countries seem to be using a 50/50 jury/televote split in choosing their entry. Will all these ballads get lost amongst the others? I don't think so b...

This weekend has so far seen another five countries decide their entries, so here is the updated list of entrants and their songs...... Albania - Kejsi Tola - Me Merr ne Enderr Andorra - Susanne Georgi - La Teva Decisio Armenia - Inga & Anush - Non Par Azerbaijan - Aysel - Arash Belarus - Petr Elfimov - Eyes That Never Lie Bosnia & Herzegovina - Regina - Bistra Voda Cyprus - Christina Metaxa - Firefly Czech Republic - Gipsy.cz - ??? Denmark - Brinck - Believe Again Finland - Waldo's People - Lose Control France - Patricia Kaas - Et s'il fallait le faire Germany - Oscar Loya - 4 words with 4 letters: Miss Kiss Kiss Bang Greece - Sakis Rouvas - ??? Hungary - Katya Tompos - Maganyos csonak (withdrawn - awaiting further news) Iceland - Jóhanna Guðrún Jónsdóttir - Is It True Israel - Noa and Mira Awad - ??? Lithuania - Sasha Son - Pasiklydes zmogus Malta - Chiara - What If We Moldova - Nelly Ciobanu - Hora Din Moldova! Montenegro - Andrea Demirovic - Just Get Out of My Life ...

Semi final 1: Andorra, Armenia, Belarus, Belgium, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Finland, Georgia, Iceland, Israel, Macedonia, Malta, Montenegro, Portugal, Romania, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey Also, United Kingdom, Germany and Spain will have to broadcast semi final One and televote for it. Semi final 2: Albania, Azerbaijan, Croatia, Cyprus, Denmark, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Ukraine Also, Russia and France will have to broadcast semi final Two and televote for it. Well we know that 7 songs from the 1st semi final have been announced and depending what happens with the others I really cannot see how Malta, Finland and Turkey will not qualify and without their songs being chosen yet I predict that the 10 to qualify will be:- Armenia, Bosnia, Finland, Malta, Sweden, Turkey, Portugal, Iceland, Switzerland, Belgium. Now Semi Final 2 is a difficult one but by the end of tomorrow night...

It would be nice for Man Meadow to be the Polish representative as it will bring another little bit of schlager to this years contest.........but we'll see on Saturday night.

And yes I am a BIG BIG Alcazar fan!!!!!!!!!!!

GOOD LUCK Alexander Rybak with the song "Fairytale"

Don't you just lovethe National Finals, some of these can be just as exciting as the actual Eurovision Song Contest itself. But where are the National Finals heading this year? It would seem that the favourite genre of music this year appears to me to be "THE BALLAD" The United Kingdom,Malta, Hungary, Cyprus, Denmark and France have all chosen them and I would say that 3 of them could actually win the Eurovision outright. The next type of music which we seem to be getting is plain standard middle of the road pop but with a hint of Greece's "Kalomoira" in it.... The girls from Andorra, Montenegro, Turkey, Romania and Albania are al out in force with this type of music but I'm sorry girls your just not as good as Ani, Sirusho or Kalomoira from 2008, well maybe excluding Hadise from that one!!! Mind you the dance song along the lines of Bulgaria and Iceland from 2008 are also making a welcome return.....Finland with the utterly fabulous "Lose Control...

So with a busy week of national selection programmes, here is the updated list of entrants and their songs...... Albania - Kejsi Tola - Me Merr ne Enderr Andorra - Susanne Georgi - La Teva Decisio Azerbaijan - Aysel - Arash Belarus - Petr Elfimov - Eyes That Never Lie Bosnia & Herzegovina - Regina - Bistra Voda Cyprus - Christina Metaxa - Firefly Czech Republic - Gipsy.cz - ??? Denmark - Brinck - Believe Again Finland - Waldo's People - Lose Control France - Patricia Kaas - Et s'il fallait le faire Greece - Sakis Rouvas - ??? Hungary - Katya Tompos - Maganyos csonak Israel - Noa and Mira Awad - ??? Malta - Chiara - What If We Montenegro - Andrea Demirovic - Just Get Out of My Life Netherland - De Toppers - Shine Romania - Elena Gheorghe - The Balkan Girls Slovenia - Quartissimo - Love Symphony Switzerland - Lovebugs - ??? Turkey - Hadise - Düm tek tek United Kingdom - Jade Ewan - It's My Time Deciding this week...... Armenia, Germany, Iceland, Lithuania, Moldova and ...

Malta choose tonight and who would bet on Chiara not getting the ticket to Moscow!!! She is by far and away the favourite to win tonight in Valetta and would definately give the UK a run for their money and could even bring about a repeat of the 1998 Song Contest. If Chiara gets the ticket to Eurovision then I will have got 3 right so far which is better than last year where the only song I supported and got right was No Angels from Germany.

So now that we are well into the National Final season, it's time to bring back a welcomed feature of last year's build up to Eurovision. Everytime a country choses it's singer or song, we'll update you here. So here we go with the first update of entries chosen so far...... Albania - Kejsi Tola - Me Merr ne Enderr Azerbaijan - Aysel - ??? Belarus - Petr Elfimov - Eyes That Never Lie Bosnia & Herzegovina - Regina - Bistra Voda Czech Republic - Gipsy.cz - ??? Denmark - Brinck - Believe Again Finland - Waldo's People - Lose Control France - Patricia Kaas - ??? Greece - Sakis Rouvas - ??? Israel - Noa and Mira Awad - ??? Montenegro - Andrea Demirovic - Just Get Out of My Life Netherland - De Toppers - Shine Romania - Elena Gheorghe - The Balkan Girls Slovenia - Quartissimo - Love Symphony Switzerland - Lovebugs - ??? Turkey - Hadise - Düm tek tek United Kingdom - Jade - It's My Time Over the next week, we'll see the national finals in Andorra, Cyprus and...

So it's the beginning of February and the UK are all ready for Eurovision . For so many years we've had to wait until the last minute before finding out who was going to represent us. However, with the passing of Wogan's reign over the ridicule of Eurovision in the UK, we were told that it was now time to take it seriously again to bring the Eurovision back to the UK shores, rather than being the laughing stock of the rest of Europe. With UK fans having been told this numerous times before by the BBC, could we believe that this year was any different? Enter Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber , probably one of the best musical writers ever known (well, in my eyes anyway!) Maybe we were going to take it seriously this time. Stepping into Wogan's shoes, to take it seriously.... we choose a comedian!!?! To choose our entrant, 5 shows - 4 being live, with Andrew Lloyd Webber writing the song for the winner. Seriousness is thrown out of the window right from the start with so...