i'm a hater at heart, but i realize being a hater isn't conducive to a positive society, so i keep it to myself, but give me some meaningless drama between two millionaire celebrities and i'll eat that shit up
Genre: Dark Romance/Smut/Angsty/Thriller/Enemies to lovers
Warnings: Explicit language/mention of domestic violence/mention of violence/alcohol abuse/mention of death/stalker/mentions of blood/drug abuse/smut scenes/dark mature themes/triggering scenes/traumatic experiences
╚» Official Playlist/Soundtrack—»
ȯ Act I
01. This is me trying by Taylor Swiff
02. Contaminated by BANKS
03. I Wanna Cry by Seori
04. Duvet by Bôa
05. Love Me Like I’m Not Made Of Stone by Lykke Li
Everyone was pretty much okay, especially the bands. They were awesome!
Blanka was still as bad as I remembered lol
Reiley was also quite bad... Very off-key
Brunette's "Future Lover" lost a bit of power in comparison to the recorded version. But she's still an awesome singer
Vesna was a bit of a letdown. I only enjoyed the chorus and even then, they're off-key...
Luke Black's moans still make me a bit uncomfortable 😂
Mae Muller is very unstable. The da-da-das of her song are bad :')
I was SO SCARED for Austria's Teya & Selena's performance but they sure made the stage a big party!
Käärijä didn't disappoint 😌✨
Loreen was awesome on stage too! Love that she took off those long-ass nails 😂
Alika, La Zarra, Alessandra, Mimicat, Iru, Blanca Paloma and Monika are INCREDIBLE performers!! Such clear voices. I'm in love 😭
Over all it was okay. I could see where all of these artists are at vocally, even if the sound wasn't the best. I can sort of guess who has possibilities to be the one whose voice breaks on stage lol
Trying to process my thoughts about last night in the form of a tumblr post...
Firstly, which songs are stuck in my head today? Well, Cha Cha Cha by Käärijä (Finland), natch, but also Promise by Voyager (Australia), and Who the hell is Edgar? by Teya and Selena (Austria)
Positives
Croatia's Let 3 made it to the left of the board! Yesss!
I'd normally be the first person to criticise the BBC, but I actually feel they did a good job considering. Admittedly my expectations going into this were kinda low, but they didn't make it too, erm, BBC 😅
Also, Hannah Waddingham. New favourite Eurovision presenter. Clearly feeling very protective of Julia Sanina. Presence, crowd control ("We don't boo in this house"). Queen.
Abolishing the jury vote from the semi-finals was a big success. Not all of my favourites got through (sorry Iceland 😢 ), but we had some amazing performers reach the finals that I'm not convinced would have in previous years.
Negatives
There were a number of artists whos performances in the final were not as good as in the semis... I'm thinking particularly Serbia and Australia, which were two of my favourites coming into the final.
Why did Germany and Spain score so badly? I keep telling myself that part of the answer to that is the old thing about the way the points work, if a song is everyone's 11th favourate out of the 26 entries, it'll get zero points, but still... I feel these were objectively two of the best performances of the night, both technically and in terms of everything else. Still very annoyed by this, they were two of my favourites. At least no-one got nil points this year.
On a related note, who was voting for Israel and Poland?! I know that musical taste is a personal thing (believe me, I know :D ) but Poland's song had no energy to it, and the highlight picked for Iceland was the dance break, with no singing...
?????
I'm not sure what else I can add about the winner/second place that hasn't already been said. We love out green cha cha cha-ing blorbo. Europe loves him. The legend of Käärijä will live on!
Related, I felt that Loreen's performance in the reprise was much better than during the main part of the competition... what happened?
Norway put in a very technical performance, and I really want to like it, but as I've been saying all week, there wasn't enough texture, not enough light and shade to the song as it was peformed. We were also missing the growl in Alessandra's vocals from the semi.
Where was the audience interaction? I get that the focus is always going to be getting votes from home, so a lot of the staging will focus on that, but it's still a live music event, and it was disappointing to only notice Belgium and Germany playing to the crowd.
I've yet to listen to the recorded versions of the songs yet (that's my lunch time listening this week), but from what I hear from @itseverydaybear some of the songs that didn't make a great impression in the semis sound much better. I suspect there will be some sleeper hits in there...
Anyhow, catch you later, just going to listen to The HARDKISS and Jann (Poland televoter's choice to represent them this year - once again for those at the back, time to abolish juries...!)
As a bonus, here's Lord of the Lost covering Queen of Kings (they have even more covers on their youtube chanel, it's worth a look!)