#i'm tagging this post-eurovision because i finally have time to clear the tags up???

[purecommemasolitude]

Unser Lied für Liverpool thoughts

Since this is the first NF i've managed to watch in its (near) entirety

TRONG - I couldn't find his full performance for some reason?? I don't know if it was an issue with the stream or what, but all I could watch was the final minute or so :( he did a good job in that minute though. still not my favourite song but #immigrantsolidarity slash half joke (okay edit now that I've gotten to watch it in full: surprisingly probably my second in terms of immediate contest preparedness! all the "oww"s got a bit annoying for me but everyone onstage performed very well and the staging was among the betters-- I wish they hadn't sometimes done the split-screen with the closeup triangle, but that's a nitpick)

René Miller - girl why did you decide on that staging 🧍‍♀️ whoever decided that he was going to be standing, without moving, on a giant rock the whole song ruined his chances at getting a high audience vote imo. literally any movement would've made it better, but i bet adding the dancers from the music video would've won him a lot of votes

Anica Russo - vocals less good than I expected but still impressive, staging was a bit of a let-down and didn't really carry the otherworldly vibe that added a lot to the music video, but her dress was very pretty

Lonely Spring - the crowd was dead 😬 the staging was once again a bit iffy but they put on a far better performance than the crowd was implying. also very wacky to hear them say "fuck" so many times considering that they'd have to censor it if they got through to Liverpool anyway?? do not understand the logic behind it

Will Church - once again the staging was a bit of a let-down imo. I do think it's a better song than the general fandom seems to, but it would either do well or flop at Liverpool, and unless they changed the staging I was leaning toward flop after the performance

Patty Gurdy - one of my favourites going into the selection :( unfortunately her vocals were just not there enough (she was near-impossible to hear at some points, I think if she'd fixed up her high notes and maybe belted more then she'd have done better) and the staging, while not as bad as some others, didn't show off the song as well as it could have

Ikke Hüftgold - This was the only one I hadn't listened to before the contest, and ngl it was better than I expected (mainly because my expectations were very, very low. but the verses were more audible than the chorus) I don't mind him getting high in the results, but I'm glad he didn't win, because in no world would this have gotten anywhere other than last place, especially since it's such a localized genre from what little I know

Frida Gold - I hope one day we can see what their planned staging was :(( they were probably my first place going into the contest and I'm very sad they had to withdraw, esp since German is long-overdue in Eurovision imo

Lord of the Lost - As I said in the tags of my initial celebratory post, after the live shows it was very very clear that without changing anything about what was presented today, LotL have by far the best chance of being successful at the proper contest. IMO they'll either flop or do incredibly well-- after all, they're a little-seen genre in the contest as a whole, but especially from Germany, and their visual presentation is on point, with by far the best staging of the whole contest, and a pretty solid performance all-around

Misc - I wish they'd had Malik Harris do an actual performance, the Eurovision medley during the voting was very fun and I enjoyed it, still wish Frida Gold had been able to participate, also it is very funny to me the upsurge of bands we're seeing this year

[sole-cuore-amore-e-droga]

Eurovision 2018 Rehearsals Day 7 - Actual first impressions

Russia: Weaklish weaklings, the sudden cuts to Julia’s closeup are a bit jarring. Kind of a weaksauce presentation with trying to be something else than it actually is. The pretty lights shouldn’t be saving it all.

Moldova: Still the same staging, but from the eurovision.tv clip I don’t really like how the chorus is sung. I’d rather if Marina did the same as she did in the national final, not try to sing in the same monoton...y(???) for the first two lines in each 4 pieces of the chorus. And as someone said, your song seems to be terrible if you think the staging can save it from failure... well the package is charming, albeit the song’s sounding dated af, but it’s Kirkorov, and nothing touched by Kirkorov ever fails... unless Kirkorov himself sings it. He’s like Björkman, except that he’s not a Russian HoD, but just merely a mentor. (Also somehow I missed both of their rehearsals in full vocally, whether on purpose or being in the English writing exam. I am so curious about the ending harmony bit of the song!)

The Netherlands: Ooh, proper camera shots do their work on this. With such, no one at home will notice these randomly dancing ‘bandmates’. I have a bone to pick with one camera shot though, it seems to be unnecessarily repeated straight after itself being shown once.

Australia: I like this dress. But sweet Jesus these vocals she displayed... the high notes especially were kind of goat-like and got me giggling together with people on the ESCXtra livestream... I’m so sorry Jess. You tried though. I bet she might as well be stellar in the jury dress rehearsal just to give Australia an excuse to qualify.

Georgia: Looks like a band that came to do their thing and went. The sound mixing in the clip was a little iffy on these guys though, I was expecting more of complete harmonizing in the last part of the song, now their vocals are just crashing into each other. Also gotta love how each vocalist got a camera shot on his own in the preview clip

Poland: Oh my, separate shots focusing on Lukas and Gromee? Ugh... Well basically, there was one long shot of Lukas walking way farther from the stage, and is still doing something like shouting the word “jump!”, which I hope he does WAY less when doing dress rehearsals AND actual live show(s). I love his elongated “goooooooo”s, that’s why. Who cares if you cannot recreate some effects that you DJ scratched on? Speaking of DJ, look at them dance moves provided by Gromee. He’s moving in his DJ booth interesting-ly and gets camera spun around him in the preview video, thinking we’re getting something else but instead we’re back to Gromee... moreover, Gromee for that time keeps his back against the viewers so it comes off as a bit awkward of a choice.

Malta: The camera shots b random in this one. Glitch cut to zoom out of the stage with fire effects shooting out during the bridge, immediate random cuts in between towards the dancer and Christabelle. I hoped this would move more smoothly. The other thing that’s smooth is Christabelle’s performance in itself. I think she’s wearing better clothes now? Not sure tbh. Oh and this is the first artist that came onto the ESCXtra’s livestream by itself and didn’t come from the interview room. Granted, she was briefly there in between the Hungarian rehearsal problems (such as it failing to take off as planned), but she arrived and had one more chit-chat with us lovely viewers. She did get to hear my comment about me wearing her hoop earrings she wore at the time, and then said she didn’t know where she got them from. xD Lovely posh lady. Sadly the song is lacklustre, as have been many songs of many others who tried a million times (lol Romanian entry) that have been selected to Eurovision. I admit, I have never heard of Ira’s “Chameleon”, but I am assuming it’s also as lacklustre so that it had to be changed into something completely else. And so was “Breathlessly” (my favourite from what I remember of Claudia’s tries was “When It’s Time” tbh). And so kinda was “Coming Home” (only because I still think Richard Edwards wants to go to Eurovision all by himself, no matter the fact he went with a band once). And so was “Warrior” of course. Why is it a Maltese tendency to snub fan faves of the NF? We will never find out.

Hungary: Ho boy. Before their rehearsal my computer underwent an 8 minute lag... only for to their rehearsal not start out the way it was planned. :’) It happened TWO MORE TIMES before one run-through actually working (and another one after that). I thought it was kind of worse than whatever happened in the first rehearsal, maybe it was because of the failorious sound mixing, I dunno. I have heard things about A Dal’s soundsystem being a bit of a failure too, so yeah. I just hope the backtrack won’t end up sounding too quiet or something, I believe it was one of the factors that led to Latvia’s failure to impress last year, together with Agnese’s vocal performance that felt like she’s too scared or too tired to do anything that day. But no really, at some point the chorus sounded like they have had Patrick Stump hidden underneath somewhere, singing in an ‘imaginary’ language (lol I know Hungarian is not imaginary, don’t @ me). Bit too eerie here, the sound system should get its shit together on it.

Latvia: Ohey I mentioned Latvia earlier ago. Your token “stand alone on stage in one place but rely on the camerashots to make it look more powerful or something” song number #428597 or so. So much so she’s used the second most camerashots this year according to my understanding (only Cyprus beats her, and the 3rd one seems to be Hungary!). Mnaaaah I still can’t help but think Latvia’s heading for a last place again. It just seems a song that can be THIS unappealing at first listen. Not to mention, “is she wearing a bed robe?”

Sweden: Nothing too much, except that Benjamin AND his backings sounded a bit too poor during the preview clip while mainly maintaining the same staging as in Melodifestivalen. Lights and everything. Down to the nodding. Should be a failure but as I mentioned earlier to Moldova... (well technically the Swedish song is still catchy and still... Swedish, so of course it’s gonna qualify.)

Montenegro: Seems fine to me, performance is a performance. Maybe the backings were a bit too loud this time though.

Slovenia: Dare I mention that the Xtra team made people miss half of the first run through and the entirety of the second run through to interview Laura Rizzotto on the livestream? Including the time spent on waiting on Laura? Glorious... and sad at the same time as I have sent her so many questions and she didn’t even bother to reply to any single one of them... :( Back to Lea now: thank God the camerashots aren’t too much in this one, otherwise they would be too much for the viewers at home, as much as the moment when the song got ‘halted’ before the 2nd chorus for Lea to ask others to sing the hook for her (according to her it was basically inserted there because she thought that her own song becomes boring midway through. We love a queen of self-shade here).

Ukraine: Same old, same old. I have heard bad things being said ‘bout the camerawork but to be pretty honest, it was good enough imo. ESPECIALLY WHEN there’s a shot dedicated to Melovin’s backing singers

[motorized-clown-show]

Okay first of all!!! Esc!!!! Which other songs are your all time faves? 💙 Also thank you for tagging me in that tag game 💙✨💙✨💙✨ (I'm Lancestrolls that's my inactive main dhhdjsjsjs sorry for the randomness)

Don't worry about it, my whole life is random (almost made an informatics reference there, whoopsie) and you're welcome for tagging you! <3 I was honestly a bit worried if I should do it because we've never interacted before and I didn't want you to think I'm weird...

Now, ESC. You don't know what you just got yourself into.

Tbh, there are many songs I love every year but there always are some that I love more than others. To prevent this post from becoming a complete mess, I will do this chronologically, starting with the 2020 songs I love.

My clear number one this year must be Répondez-moi by Gjon's Tears (Switzerland) (which is the song I made GIFs for before Lie To Me). Straight up 12/10, I sometimes (okay most of the times) I shed a tear (or more like a waterfall lol) when I listen to it, even though my French sucks and don't understand everything.

I also love Violent Thing by Ben Dolic (Germany) but TBF, I might be a bit biased because I'm German and I already loved Ben when he participated in The Voice of Germany. But for me, Violent Thing is a really good song and I'm really disappointed that we won't get a live performance of this on the ESC stage.

Another one of my favourites is the Danish song from this year, Yes by Ben & Tan. It's just a song that makes me super happy and I love their voices. I know many people think this is cheesy but I don't think so even though I can see their point.

Chains On You by Athena Manoukian (Armenia) is just a bop and has the third best music video, and that's all I'll say about this. Because otherwise I probably couldn't stop anymore.

The last 2020 entry I absolutely love is Grow by Jeangu Macrooy (The Netherlands). I've seen some people claim that this was just an attempt to copy Arcade, but no, it's not imo. Just because both of the songs are ballads it doesn't mean one tried to copy the other. Also, this is the second best music video (best one is Switzerland).

Alrighty, let's continue with 2019, and disclaimer: just because I like a country's song it doesn't mean that I support that country/the politics of that country.

Even though my Spotify top 100 from 2019 might try to tell you otherwise, I was really happy when Arcade by Duncan Laurence (The Netherlands) won last year, it's seriously in every playlist of mine. His live performance was stunning and I still think about it very often.

The song Spotify tries to tell you is my favourite from last year, is another one I really love (but who would have guessed that). Sometimes my mind just goes *clap clap* and I think back to that performance of Soldi by Mahmood (Italy) and then I have to think of the time when I went to his concert last October...

Okay and now we get to the song that I decided to write that disclaimer for. Scream by Sergey Lazarev (Russia). Drama 10/10, staging 10/10, lyrics 10/10 and vocals 10/10. In the beginning I admittedly didn't really like it but it grew on me quickly.

Yay, another Danish entry: Love Is Forever by Leonora. It's such a sweet song and has a really important message (imo). Alright, the staging with the giant chair is a bit weird but also oddly fitting? Also, Leonora has performed in the Eurovision Home Concerts and her performance was just. So. Good. Oh and the use of the four languages is just amazing.

Another ESC bop: Dirty Dancing by Luca Hänni (Switzerland). In the beginning I hated it but then he performed in the final and I was like "okay I guess it's actually alright but still not my favourite" and well, now I love it but I don't know why. Like it's a great song but I didn't realize my mind changed from hate to live in a month or so.

Unpopular opinion: Home by Kobi Marimi (Israel) was an amazing song. Of course it wasn't another 'Toy' but still a great successor. The emotions in it and also the lyrics are just *chefs kiss*

Okay so because this post would never end, I decided not to add comments to the songs anymore.

Lie To Me by Mikolas Josef (Czech Republic 2018)

Non Mi Avete Fatto Niente by Ermal Meta & Fabrizio Moro (Italy)

Stones by Zibbz (Switzerland)

(okay you may laugh at me) Our Choice by Ari Olafsson (Iceland)

You Let Me Walk Alone by Michael Schulte (Germany)

Story Of My Life by Naviband (Belarus 2017)

Occidentali's Karma by Francesco Gabbani (Italy)

Requiem by Alma (France)

Grab The Moment by Jowst (Norway)

LoveWave by Iveta Mukuchyan (Armenia 2016)

What's The Pressure by Laura Tesoro (Belgium)

J'ai cherché by Amir (France)

Ghost by Jamie-Lee Kriewitz (Germany)

Hear Them Calling by Greta Salome (Iceland)

Made Of Stars by Hovi Star (Israel)

You Are The Only One by Sergey Lazarev (Russia) (yes he's the same dude from 2019)

If I Were Sorry by Frans (Sweden)

Rhythm Inside by Loïc Nottet (Belgium 2015)

Love Injected by Aminata (Latvia)

A Monster Like Me by Mørland & Debrah Scarlett (Norway)

A Million Voices by Polina Gagarina (Russia)

Heroes by Måns Zelmerlöw (Sweden)

This is where I will stop, but if you want to talk about Eurovision or comment on my weird music taste, just send a DM, I don't bite.

Please enjoy my favourite dumb pictures of ESC 2019.