Category: ESC 2024
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Leap Day Madness! Switzerland (Nemo), Netherlands (Joost Klein), Cyprus (Silia Kapsis), Austria (Kaleen), and UK (Olly Alexander) Reviews
February 29 was an onslaught! Five countries with internal selections finally released their tracks!
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San Marino 2024 Review: “11:11” – Megara
Full disclosure: I more or less decided to boycott this national final after it was announced they would team up with an AI startup and fast-track an AI-generated song into the final (not gonna link to it or name it – if you’re curious, it came in 7th in the…
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Belgium 2024 Review: “Before the Party’s Over” – Mustii
Mustii was one of the very first acts announced for this 2024 ESC season, in keeping with the fact that the Wallonian broadcaster, which alternates yearly in the Belgian selection process with the Flemish one, has historically avoided national finals in favor of internal selections. This approach has paid off…
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Poland 2024 Review: “The Tower” – Luna
After last year’s shitshow of a national final, where incomprehensible jury voting led to the overwhelming televote favorite to flop and to rumors of bribing, fixing, and other shenanings, Poland had the presence of mind to just say, let’s take a step back and regroup and maybe hold an internal…
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Super Saturday!!! Estonia (5MIINUST and Puuluup), Moldova (Natalia Barbu), Denmark (Saba) and Lithuania (Silvester Belt) Reviews
Not to pat my own back BUT all countries choosing winners today picked acts I had singled out and analyzed in each of their respective national final reviews. I will also say that I really like (three of) these songs, leaving Germany and Finland as the only two countries to…
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Germany 2024 Review: “Always on the Run” – Isaak
Oh, Germany. Germany, Germany, Germany. Germany has been bottom 5 in seven of the last eight contests. So that’s where we’re starting from. Germany’s current goal at ESC is not winning. It’s not coming Top 10. It’s getting out from last place. In a lineup leaning fairly heavily on the…
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Eurovizija.LT 2024 – ESC Etc. Top 2 Songs from the Lithuanian National Final
In contrast to the 2023 contest, which featured three of my favorite tracks of the whole ESC season (Rūta MUR, please forgive us and come back), the 2024 Lithuanian national final that is about to crown a winner tomorrow has probably been the biggest disappointment of my ESC year so…
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Three More Countries Dropping Songs!!! Italy (Angelina Mango), Latvia (Dons) and Finland (Windows95man) Reviews
I’ve more or less covered both these songs while discussing these countries’ respective national finals – Dons more so than Angelina – but I still have opinions! With Dons in particular, since we knew from the get-go he would ultimately win Supernova, I think the national delegation should have taken…
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Sanremo 2024 – ESC Etc. Top 15 (!!!) Songs from the Italian National Final
OK. So. I can say this because I’ve been watching Sanremo for about 40 years: this is the strongest line-up we’ve ever gotten in my lifetime. Sure, we had years where a few songs went on to become classics and standards of Italian musica leggera, but I cannot recall another…
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More Countries Dropping Songs!!! Spain (Nebulossa), Ukraine (Alyona Alyona & Jerry Heil) and Norway (Gåte) Reviews
I figured a combined post might be warranted here because we got no fewer than 4 national finals this past Saturday, with some heavy hitters finally selecting their 2024 representatives. Since I already reviewed two of the winning songs from this weekend, why not take a more holistic look?
ESC Etc. 