Terminal 3.... The Eurovision Blog

I still cannot believe that I was in the arena 3 weeks ago today as the first semi final had finished and a group of us were heading for The Monkey Club to party the night away!!!! What a semi final that was............ Poland getting last place, Norway, Turkey and Armenia not qualifying.............. though to be honest I am not suprised and no matter how many people say there was technical problems that night I still think the best 10 songs went through and even Georgia has started to grow on me since the show. My biggest suprise from the week was how badly some of the pre contest favourites did............. UK, France, Estonia and Hungary to name a few. My personal favourite was Italy and I was overjoyed that Raphael Gualazzi took them to that coveted 2nd place, even though I was convinced that with 3 votes to go Italy were gonna pip Azerbaijan to the post. I did say (though not on here) that Azerbaijan would be Top 5, but honestly never saw it as the winner........... I think they ...

So two weeks have passed since this year's contest and we can already start looking forward to next year. Switzerland are the first to confirm entry to next year's contest, quickly followed unofficially by Finland who have announced that they are changing the selection process for next year's contest. Israel's participation is in doubt as the preliminary dates for next year clash with a religious holiday in Israel.  They appear to have asked for the contest to be moved to a different week to allow them to participate, but whether this request will be accepted is still to be seen. Azerbaijan have also started planning for the contest and have arranged a group of influential people to organise it.  It appears that Baku will be the host and at present, there are three possible sites for the contest.  One of the options being to build a whole new venue.  It is believed that more details will be available after a meeting on 20th June.

Dear Mr. Sand, For many years, the Eurovision Song Contest has entertained millions upon millions of viewers across Europe and now the world.  Bringing European countries together to celebrate European music is no mean feat, but year upon year, you manage to put out a show to enthral us. Criticism over "political" or "neighbourly" voting increased year upon year as more and more Eastern European countries joined the contest on the break up of their countries.  Eurovision became synonymous with bad voting influencing the result and many countries criticised you for it.  I, myself, feel that Eurovision wouldn't be the same without some of the "neighbourly" voting and have grown up to love the voting and the show. However, to the EBU's credit, you then decided to tackle it and changed the voting system in the semi-finals and introduced 50% professional jury votes for all.  These changes were welcome and people started believing in Eurovision aga...

Eurovision in the United Kingdom has a love/hate relationship with the general public. Speak to many people about the subject, and after they have joked about it they will admit to never missing it. Eurovision has been the butt of jokes for many years in the UK and was probably fuelled by Sir Terry Wogan, who's commentary of the show for the BBC was always full of ridicule. It also hasn't helped that the big music artists of the UK won't go anywhere near Eurovision. Partly because they don't need to for success and also because failure could mean the end of their careers. Recently, the UK entrants have been a group of nobodies who have quickly disappeared once their participation was over. What changed for this year? Well I think it was down to Germany's success last year. For many years, Germany had been down in the lower reaches of the final placings chart just like the UK. They entered a good song and wow, they won! Could this signal that the tide wa...

Well it's the day after Eurovision day!  Eurovision 2011 is in the history books and it's time to look back at the contest and look forward to next year.  I suppose today is the day that every Eurovision fan dreads..... the hangover from yesterday and it's the longest point until next years contest! Hee Hee I have to say that I really enjoyed last night show and I think it was one of the strongest finals in recent years.  This was obviously reflected in the scoring, which was very close up until the last few juries.  So lets start off with talking about the presentation of the show....  As far as I'm concerned, the German's didn't really do a good job of presentation.  There was a lot of "padding out" of the show which it really didn't need.  The comic punch reappeared from the semi-final even though it looked stupid in the semi.  I also think that Anke and Stefan were trying to hog the limelight a bit too much and left Judith out. After all, ...

Tonight it's...... JEDWARD!!!!! Yes tonight the rest of Europe will be introduced to Jedward.  Twins John and Edward, born in Dublin, Ireland first came to the public's attention when they took part in the 2009 British tv show "The X Factor".  The British public had a love/hate relationship with them, but they still managed to finish sixth that year. Since that time, they have been dropped by Sony after just one single release which got to no.2 in the UK and no.1 in Ireland.  After being signed up by Universal Records, they have gone on to get a no.1 album in Ireland (no. 17 in UK) and are now representing their own country Ireland this year. The twins are a high energy act and put a lot into their performance.  The song is very catchy and I think it will do really well.  Being one who didn't like Jedward when they were on the X Factor, I did question the Irish thinking when they picked them, but I think their gamble may pay off with qualification to the fin...