Rehearsals: Day 1: Part 2 Latvia - Romania

Unfortunately due to my usual Sunday routine I was not in a position to stay in live mode for the afternoon. Anyhow here's how the rehearsals look to be going for the first half of the the first semi-final.

Latvia - Rehearsal Video
Those who have followed the blog will know that this is far from one of my favourite entries. Anmary's vocal performance today is really, really good but I don't like the display behind her. I think it lacks a strong colour. This is as close to my lovely horse as you can get and I suspect that it will stay this way. Anmary still is a very strange performer onstage too. This needed something really special to stand out onstage and it has not delivered on this. I cannot see this qualifying.

Albania - Rehearsal Video
Without a doubt I am really delighted by how well this is working onstage. Vocally this is just outstanding. The only issue that could be a problem is that Rona needs to make far more contact with the camera for this song to really score well on the public televote, but otherwise it has been a great performance. The extra drum towards the end should lift it and make it a little more anthemic. This does mean though that sound mixing will need to be very, very good for this all to work. Media reaction to this song has been equally positive but no one seems to be predicting this as either a qualifier or not.

Romania - Rehearsal Video
Romania has impressed me today. I found this a bit boring up until now but the extra bass in the song is excellent. If it doesn't come across on TV this will flop. Up until now I have felt that it is just a bit soft. But no, instead it is more like something from a club which I would listen to. This is well listened to and liked by the press and people seem to have a soft spot for this. Vocal concerns were also knocked today with a strong showing from the lead singer. After the first five songs this really should stand out to the televoters.

Lots More News

• Rona Nishliu has released her song Suus in English, the version is a bit more jazzy than her actual Albanian version. You can listen to the song here. Personally I think it is a masterpiece of music but I am in the minority who actually like the song.
• Eurovision in Concert was last night. If you were at it I really hoped that you enjoyed it. If you weren't (like myself) then the photos and videos are now starting to appear online, check escXtra.com and EscToday.com 
• Finally in other news, Norway's OGAE have declared their votes for Eurovision 2012, unsurprisingly Sweden and Iceland got 12 and 10 points respectively, with Serbia and Romania getting 8 and 7 points. This puts Sweden very firmly in the lead with about 13% of clubs declared. Iceland are in second position. 

Back to reviews tomorrow.

Eurovision Overload!

It seems that much has happened in Eurovision since I left on Friday and to be honest I'm hardly able to keep up with it all but here are my thoughts:

• May as well start on a positive note. Azerbaijan have presented their Eurovision entry sung by Sabina. I really thing this is good. It might not win (it has an outside chance) but really it is quite nice. You can watch the video here.
• The widely anticipated entry from the UK was released today, you can listen to it here. I will have much more on this in a later post. 
• As many videos arrive in we are seeing a couple of songs being tweaked a little bit. I don't really pay much attention to this as the changes are rarely noticeable. However Belarus have done a pretty big overhaul of their song which does help it a small little bit. You can hear there song here.
• Albania have cut down their song to three minutes and presented it in a video that to be honest looks like is out of a horror film. I still think that it is a strong song. The video is here.
• Belgium have presented their song Would You by Iris. It's a fairly basis ballad and I can't see it going to far but we'll see what juries do in semi-final 1. You can listen to the song here.

Finally I hope you all enjoyed St. Patrick's Day while some people decided to do some odd things (Green Ice Tea and Jedward?, seriously). I had a more traditional one involving buying 20kgs of seed potatoes.