Tonight after a marathon National Final we have reached the end of the Maltese selection. To explain how bored people were: You may notice sometimes during the dull part of a national final we will post up a Why not visit the blog? tweet [Our marketing department say it is a good idea]. Normally this generates 2/3 extra visitors. When I did it during Eurosong I got 15.
Anyway we all woke up just after midnight to see what was a rather entertaining voting. The ultimate winner was KURT CALLEJA who will sing This Is The Night for Malta in Baku. Full review will be out in a week or two but suffice to say I think it is a little average.
Moving on to other matters at hand Hungary and Lithuania had their semi-finals tonight also and I gather that they passed off without anyone watching them.
However most interestingly Sweden held their first Melodifestivalen semi-final which was a entertaining and as interesting as ever. I think people have finally gotten their heads around the "poor" songs and are now accepting that the songs are not normally seen in MF. This meant that we had one of the most intriguing contests in a long time. I know our predictions were out (badly) but Swedes are very changeable in their nature when it comes to Melodifestivalen. Sean Banan and Throston Flinck went to Anfra Chansen with Dead By April and Loreen advancing to the Final. I thoroughly enjoyed Melodifestivalen this week and look forward to next week.
Norway too held their ultimate semi-final. This one turned out to have a couple of surprises (most of them were very pleasant). The biggest surprise was Yaseen & Julie Maria coming third with their song Sammen. I didn't think very much of it and my mind is still unchanged but I think their performance highlights why the number of people on stage needs to be restricted. Tooji also made it through. He was the Norwegian answer to Eric Saade and the number of similarities was actually freaky. It turned into a bit of a spot the difference competition [He didn't wear leather gloves]. He deserves credit for an excellent performance however coming second means that he will be first to sing in the final which may not work in his favor. The best and most pleasant surprise was how well Bobby Bare and Petter Oien's song came across on the stage. Everything about it worked and Bobby was such a country gentleman. I was really impressed by what appeared to be the bond between the two men. It was real music.
Norway is expected to announce their wildcard on Thursday. We suspect it will go to the Canoes but also consider Minne-Oh, Lisa Stokke and especially Lise Karlnese to be in with a chance.
That brings this evening to a close. The next big event will be on Monday with Germany holding heat 5. However we tend to ignore Germany for the moment. We will be busy over the coming week preparing for the weekend so please be patient with us if things are quiet during the week.
P.S. We don't have a marketing department.
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