It’s time for the second wildcard round of the season (and, hopefully, the last wildcard round of the season). Originally, there were going to be 11 candidates in this round, but one of them (Teslenko) withdrew in favour of San Marino. So now we’re left with just 10. Let’s see if there’s any quality here.
This year, Estonia released 152 entries out of 175 total submitted ones (15 direct finalists, 20 wildcards and 137 rejected submissions - even though some of them got removed later, the internet still remembers). In a way, I think it could be a fun project to review literally all of them, so here I go, listening to a lot of bad songs. This post will be specifially about the wildcard round.
Hello and welcome to one of two national finals that weren’t actually national finals at first. Coincidentally, both of them still feature a live orchestra. Yes, it’s Albania time.
Yes, it’s finally time to do a review of 2011. I was putting this off for long enough, but I finally have to sit down and review these, oh god, 43 songs. A quick rundown of the contest: hosted in Düsseldorf by Stefan Raab and two other people (Anke Engelke and Judith Rakers), nobody withdrew, while Austria, Hungary, Italy and San Marino all returned after realising that Western European countries weren’t, in fact, at a disadvantage as long as they sent good songs. No more waffling from me, let’s go.
Welcome to the first out of many national final posts this year. I’ll try to cover all proper NFs (i.e. no X-Factor-style artist selections - looking at you, Israel and maybe Georgia).
However, I have to ask: why did they call this “Montesong 2024” when it’s for Eurovision 2025? That makes it needlessly confusing. Czechia called their NF “ESCZ Year” where “Year” was the ESC edition it was for, so we had ESCZ 2024 in December 2023. But I digress. Welcome back, Montenegro. I hope you’re here to stay.
Welcome to Oslo, to an arena NRK booked even before the 2009 final was held since they were so sure of winning. Due to being in Norway (expensive), four whole countries dropped out of the contest (granted, most of them also had no success). The countries we lost were Andorra (who never managed to qualify and decided to leave forever), Czechia (who never managed to qualify and decided to leave for a while), Montenegro (who never managed to qualify and decided to leave for a bit), as well as Hungary who actually have qualified before, but didn’t have money to keep participating consistently (so they had to rethink their approach). But hey, Georgia was back, so that’s something! And Ukraine managed to not get disqualified, even though they almost nearly were, so that’s good! All in all, 39 countries participated. But will we get stuck with 39 awful songs like in 2008, or will we continue the trend of having actually good songs like in 2009? I already know the answer, but I won’t say it upfront.
This is an anniversary post, I published my first review precisely a year ago. I’m so happy to look back and see how far I’ve come. But let’s do this sappy sort of stuff at the end of the post.
For 2009, Russia chose one of two cities that exists in Russia: Moscow. It makes sense that they’d host it in the capital for the first time - they probably would’ve held it in St. Petersburg if they won a second time. But they definitely wouldn’t have allowed those weirdos from anywhere else to host, that’s for sure. As always, there were some changes in the lineup, as San Marino dropped out and Slovakia returned. It was looking like it was going to be another year with 43 countries, but Georgia’s entry was disqualified for being “political” as well, and they decided to take a stand by not submitting a replacement, thereby making it the first of several years where the “curse of 43” kicked in. The juries were also brought back, who accounted for 50% of the results - even though the system used to get to the final result still wasn’t perfect, and it would take the EBU until 2016 to finally perfect it. This was also my first time following Eurovision before the show and picking my favourites (none of them qualified, which is what started my contrarian streak), as well as actually watching the semifinals since my favourites were spread out over them. I had five favourites (and I’m gonna be shamelessly biased towards them) - let’s see if you can guess which ones they were before I reveal them.
The streak of new winners is almost over, so let’s enjoy the last bits of it. Hosted in Belgrade, this contest featured 43 countries - the highest number of countries ever (tied with 2011 and 2018). This was clearly too much for the EBU, so they decided to split it into two semifinals with 10 countries qualifying from each. The countries would also be seeded based on voting patterns to reduce bloc voting. As for the changes in the lineup, Austria was having a sulk over not doing well with their terrible songs, so they withdrew. On the other hand, Azerbaijan and San Marino made their debuts. This means that only Australia’s debut is left. And I’m sure every country sent their best effort to this contest, so all 43 entries will be amazing! Right? Right????
After Lordi’s extremely deserved win, it was Finland’s turn to receive the contest, and they decided to do another production upgrade. From now on, Eurovision will be produced and broadcast in HD to allow us to see every tiny detail of every performance. And that was all done with 42 countries taking part - making it one of the biggest contests even to this day (only 2008, 2011 and 2018 would feature more countries - and a couple other years would also have 42). Initially, it was going to be even higher, as Monaco had expressed interest at first, and Azerbaijan didn’t join because their EBU membership was delayed, but it could’ve been 44 countries, with 30 of them competing in the semifinal. In the end, we got a slightly less terrible, but still really bad 28 countries in the semifinal. Four of them are new countries: Czechia, Georgia, Serbia and Montenegro. As Serbia and Montenegro had split into Serbia and Montenegro, both were now eligible to take part in Eurovision. Meanwhile, Georgia got that fancy new EBU membership. Austria and Hungary also returned (not as a single country, thankfully), and they had to compete in the semifinal as well.
Greece has waited since 1974 to win this contest, and Helena Paparizou finally won the contest on her second attempt. Since the 2005 final overran was very significant, the EBU had to think of a way to reduce the running time. Their solution was simple: the spokespeople would no longer present all of the points - but only the 8, 10 and 12 points. This was both a good and a bad change, but more on that later. It definitely helped the runtime, though, especially with 38 countries voting this year. Also, Austria, Hungary and Serbia and Montenegro withdrew, but Armenia joined, leaving us with 37 entries. Huh? What? There were 37 entries, but 38 voting countries? Yes! Since Serbia and Montenegro withdrew just a couple days before the show, they retained their right to vote, which was the first time votes from a non-participating country were taken into account.