Tonight is the big kickoff. The first semi-final is today (May 12), the second semi on Thursday.

So, who are your favorites this year? (haha, sorry, couldn't help myself)

Amazingly, Norway is considered the big favorite this year. It's amazing when you think of all the crap they've sent, and their record in both last places and nil points. But this year the song is actually pretty catchy. Here's the song for you:




Norway is scheduled in the 2nd semi final, so it won't be on until Thursday. Tonight's favorites are Armenia, with their annoyingly catchy dance song; Turkey, a pop song with this year's sexiest singer; Malta, with Chiara who has previously finished 2nd and 3rd; Bosnia & Herzegovina, with the best of the Balkans this year; and Switzerland, my personal favorite. It's a good rock song. Hear it here, it's not the usual Eurovision crap:

I don't get why they don't show this in America. We have 8 million cable channels, you'd think one station would show it.

I think it's possible to watch it at eurovision.tv

The show is just finished. I guessed 9 out of 10 correct finalists, beating Norway's Eurovision expert by one.

Those who got through to the final were: Sweden, a quite catchy pop/opera song; Armenia, a special, but good dance song with eastern roots; Turkey, a sexy shakiraesque dancepop song; Israel, a Palestinian/Israeli beg for peace, good idea, bad song; Iceland, beautiful girl with a beautiful ballad; Romania, a very simple teenpop song; Finland, eurodance just the way we hate it; Portugal, a sweet breeze of a song, very feel-good; Malta, great voice, but the song is going nowhere; and Bosnia, one of the best this year, it'll grow on you. Here it is:

Many quite good songs. My favourite was Portugal but Bosnia and some others were good too.

Actually, the one song I got wrong while guessing which ones would get through to the final was Finland. I had Belarus instead (the guy with the blond hair). I kept two lists, one of my personal favs, and the other of who I thought would get through.

I got my votes here:

1p Malta
2p Romania
3p Belgium
4p Switzerland
5p Belarus
6p Turkey
7p Iceland
8p Bosnia
10p Portugal
12p Armenia

I hate the Swedish song and schleuse would agree with me. I'm not a big fan of rock-operas (rock music using the opera format), but now I know that opera-pop (opera using the pop format) is even worse. However, I caught a glimpse of Finland and they were probably even worse.

In Sweden the "Melody Festival" (the qualification to the Eurovision Song Contest) is the biggest T.V. event of the year, a long tournament which finally reaches its climax in the final show. Every Swedish artist who looks for fame in the first place is participating.

The Swedish song was pretty bad, but there were a lot of stinkers, so I almost ended up giving it points. I ranked them as number 11 yesterday.

Please Henrik, explain to me what it is you HATE with rock and pop in the opera format. Just disregarding it with out any kind of motivation is rather ignorant i would say.

Have they changed the voting system for this years final?

Oh yes.. there was another semi yesterday. Some quite good songs, and some crap songs that was still regarded as favorites.

These countries went through:

Croatia, a screaming duo performing run of the mill Eurovision stuff; Norway, a violin driven danceable Norwegian folk song; Denmark, standard poprock penned by Ronan Keating, sounds like Ronan Keating; Azerbaijan, a winning song, catchy Eurovision standard wrapped in ethnic pop sounds, fronted by gorgeous woman; Greece, synthetic dancepop by a guy who probably pulls a lot of women on Greek beaches during summer season; Lithuania, a quite anonymous love song sung by a guy with a hat and a piano; Moldova, Moldovan folk music, catchy stuff, and you can dance to it too; Albania, my favorite, a pop song that touches all the right notes; Ukraine, winner of the "Prostitute of the Year"-award, by the looks of it, annoying song, still one of the favorites; Estonia, a quite good string driven song, will probably end up on last place.

Here's a couple of videos for you.

First Azerbaijan, one of the favorites.




Then Albania, my favorite

I just found out I have a Eurovision Song Contest button on my keyboard. How cool! I'm going to press it tonight. Do you have one? Mine's at the top left of the keyboard.

My favourite part of the Eurovision is trying to guess which of their neighbours each country will give their 12 points to. Who could have guessed that Spain would get 12 from Andorra.

Hurray! Norway won. Next year I'll travel to see the show. And now it's even our national day!

Congratulations to Norway!

Finland was last (how on earth they even got to the final). 0 points from Norway. What happened to that always give points to neighbours?

My three favorites were
1. Estonia
2. Portugal
3. Bosnia & Herzegovina

And then Iceland and Norway. Russia was very interesting.

Finland actually got to the final chosen by a jury. They only finished 12th in their semifinal.

I liked Albania, Estonia and Bosnia.