News Flash: Italy Changes Their Song

Nina Zilli will now perform the song L'Amore É Femmina at the Eurovision Song Contest. The announce came today on Eurovision.tv. This means that sadly we've lost a great song from Eurovision, replacing it with a more contest friendly song. The song is definitely more suited to the contest and while I do like the new song I am disappointed with RAI's decision. This is largely because after Gualazzi's triumph that was the Madness of Love I thought that Italy on the back of the strong San Remo format might actually try to send songs that were a bit more classy. Songs that would appeal more to juries than public. While I think that this is going to be great at Eurovision, I still think that it is a lost opportunity for Italy to be different what is a somewhat generic contest.

The Next Four Eurovision Songs

 My, that was a busy day. This is my reaction piece to the finals that were held today. The reaction piece to the semi-finals is here. So here we have the four songs that were selected today:

At no earlier than 13:00 GMT Ukraine selected their entry sung by Tina Turner impressionist  Gaitana with song "Be My Guest" it is rather good too.

Next up is Croatia Nina Badric, with the song Nebo - I am unsure about this song but suspect this could be one of the weaker songs from the Balkans this year. (I wonder is she still off sex too).

Then Latvia delivered a disappointment of a result by sending Anmary with the song "Beautiful Song".

And finally late in the day, Italy came out with an excellent song by Nina Zilli. She was selected with the song Per Sempre. However it is not known if this is her song for Baku. I would love to see it in ESC.

Tonight: It's Another Super Saturday

Today sees a huge marathon of shows across Europe. 4 Acts will be selected today/tonight we know one of those already that is Ukraine who had their final at the ungodly hour of 11:30 CET - here in Ireland that's 10:30 and I wanted a lie on more than I wanted to watch Ukraine. So I didn't see it but I have seen the winner. [full post later].

Otherwise two songs will be presented tonight - that's Italy [who I am very much looking forward to hearing] and Croatia. Croatia will have a special show at 20:00 CET which lasts one hour so we such hear the song around 21:00 CET. Italy will present their song as well tonight and I suspect that it could be very late tonight [after 23:00 CET] before we hear the song I am not sure what I will be watching tonight so I recommend watching the usual channels for information about Italy.

Latvia also will select their entry tonight in a dual final format. The first will be at 18:00 CET [about one hour from now] and the second super final will be at 20:00 CET. I will throw up the review shortly.

Sweden holds the third semi-final of Me.lodifestivalen tonight at 20:00 CET. You can read our reviews of it here.

Lithuania holds a semi-final too at 20:00 CET. Estonia holds one which starts at 20:30 CET. You can read our reviews of the Estonian semi-final here.

This may all be bit  confusing so I recommend the page that escXtra have developed.