Thursday, 16 May 2019

Predicting Semi 2 - trusting my instincts

7/10 for my Semi 1 prediction, which is quite poor, frankly. And my mistake? I allowed myself to be swayed by the words of those in the press centre, and the enthusiasm of those watching the clips we got, and went against my original instincts and included Poland and Georgia among my qualifiers, and took out San Marino. It says a lot that my original, pre-rehearsal prediction, was better, with 9/10.

So tonight, I think I'm going to stick to my guns, and go with my original impressions as far as possible.

There's a lot here that I'd be delighted to be wrong about - my personal Top 10 in this semi contains at least four of the songs I'm predicting to be out after tonight. Unlike Serhat on Tuesday though, I don't think there's any chance my personal last place (and 41/41 overall), Latvia, comes close to qualifying.

1. Netherlands
2. Sweden
3. Russia
4. Azerbaijan
5. Switzerland
- these obvious top 5 have only solidified their positions in rehearsals)
6. Malta - the YouTube ads and the staging variations, different in every rehearsal, only demonstrate how much Malta are trying. And when Malta are trying in ways we can see, you can be sure they're also trying in ways that we're not seeing.
7. Denmark - total semi-final song, especially coming after a bunch of dark, moody songs
8. North Macedonia - surely even Macedonia can't stuff this up now? If they did, it would be...

9. Romania - I think it's only me who believes in this, and I might be blinded by my love of it, but I think it's strong enough to get through, especially with the professional performance it looks like they're delivering
10. Armenia - despite everything, I think they just scrape through, but I debated this one a lot, and considered swapping it with the two below multiple times.

11. Croatia
12. Austria
13. Norway - this is where I'm really sticking to my guns. I love the song, but when it won the Norwegian final, I said to myself 'this is Verona'. I just don't see who votes for this, outside Eurovision fandom.
14. Lithuania - whereas here I'm going against my original instincts, but Lithuania have done none of their normal staging wizardry that lifted their mediocre mid-tempo males into finals past.
15. Albania - again, I just don't see where the audience is for this
16. Moldova
17. Ireland
18. Latvia