Guide to grading

Over the last few week and the coming months you will notice a number of reviews of songs on the blog. It is an area we specialise in and are proud of it. However here at The Best Eurovision Blog our reviews may not seem perfectly straight forward. This post is to give you some insight about how we go about it. While the blog has only been online for about half a year I have many years experience of grading songs at every level.

Grading
All songs are Graded on a scale of 18 grades. These range from A+ to E- (passing grades) these mean I think the song is acceptable for Eurovision and they are placed somewhere on the scale [Anything over C- means I would come back to listen to it]. F and G are fail grades meaning I think the song is unacceptable for Eurovision.  NG (Non-Gradable) is only given when I cannot bring myself to listen to a song for long enough to grade it.

Grading Scales
The Normal Scale: The scale that I normally use is reasonably tough. It means a good national final should have mainly C's. A poor one will have mostly D's and E's.

The Higher Scale: This scale is used at Eurovision, it is far tougher than the earlier scale but the results should be similar as the higher scale is meant to reflect the stronger songs. While it is it meant for Eurovision it is used in some national finals.

The Melodifestivalen Scale: This scale is only used in some Melodifestivalen finals when more that 60% of songs are receiving A's on the higher scale. This is a very strict scale and grades are not calculated the normal way. It has only once been deployed outside of a Melodifestivalen Final, in Norway last year.

Before grading is confirmed it is checked against other countries under the same scale to ensure uniform grades are generally given out.