Cav's Place

There went another good edition, though I think not as good as last year’s. It would appear that many countries are starting to learn the kind of songs that may have a chance and selecting accordingly, which is a good thing. On the other hand, I wasn’t exactly pleased by the overall show value of this year’s entries, as quite a few seemed to pay little attention to that, especially if you’re to only take what actually happened on the stage into account and ignore the fireworks and pretty pictures.

I’m not sure that Azerbaijan deserved the win this year, but if I’ll listen to it several more times I might end up agreeing. Either way, they could have won in any of the previous three years and I never put them lower than second until now, so it only makes sense that when I put them lowest, if you consider fourth being low, they’d actually win, but I really don’t mind it. They gathered enough Eurovision karma so far to deserve it. The only problem is that I really don’t care for encouraging the Azeri regime, and having them host the next edition could be seen as doing that.
Italy had a song that I could recognize had great musical value, but somebody’d need to really force me to listen to something like that. I couldn’t even listen to it all the way to the end when I went through them after all entries became known. It’s been quite a while since I disliked an entry quite so much. I think the fact that they returned to the competition after so long had a fair bit to say in the amount of points they got too.
Sweden was all right. Catchy, powerful and with a reasonable show value, it had everything required to earn lots of points, but nothing standing out enough to give it a chance to win.
Ukraine had great show value, and in fact was this year’s only entry truly worth remembering because of that. The song was quite good too, but during the semifinal I was focusing almost entirely on the sand painting and had trouble even listening to it. Oddly enough, though I’d think that semifinals put entries that rely on show value at a significant disadvantage, as viewers are no longer surprised by it in the final, it did worse in the semifinal than in the final, being only sixth. I’m quite confused about that.
As for Denmark’s entry, the song itself once again had everything required to earn a lot of points and a good message on top of that, but the lack of any “tricks” to boost its show value into the “good” range dragged it down.

On my end, I decided to change my ranking system a little by allowing for half-point marks, which resulted in 6.5 being used a whole lot and at times making things even less clear than under the old system that made me constantly wonder whether a song deserved 6 or 7. Oddly enough, 6.5 got used a whole lot for the show rating as well, though the old system had very clear specifications as to exactly what deserved each possible show rating, so was more or less inventing conditions as I went along. As a result, I wouldn’t call this year’s ratings properly calibrated, though for the most part they were close enough and certainly made it easier to rank at the end of the show.
Perhaps largely for my own use, so I’ll be able to compare next year, I’ll provide some more detail this time around by also listing the marks I gave instead of just my classification and the actual place in the competition listed between parentheses. You’ll see this additional information after the country name, between parentheses. The first number is the average between the song rating and the show rating, which is the first criteria. The second is the song rating, which is the second criteria. In case my “personal opinion” rating, which I always put in to cover various things that the two main ratings can’t quite include, is not neutral, you’ll see “plus” or “minus” as the third value. The show rating isn’t listed because you can figure it out based on the song rating and the average. As always, if everything is equal, the classification is a result of me trying to quickly compare what I remembered of the songs in question at the end.

1. (4.) Ukraine (7.25, 6.5, plus)
2. (19.) Lithuania (6.75, 7.5, plus)
3. (9.) Georgia (6.75, 7)
4. (1.) Azerbaijan (6.75, 7)
5. (3.) Sweden (6.75, 6.5, minus)
6. (24.) Estonia (6.75, 6.5, minus)
7. (16.) Russia (6.75, 6.5, minus)
8. (5.) Denmark (6.5, 6.5, plus)
9. (17.) Romania (6.5, 6.5, plus)
10. (13.) Slovenia (6.5, 6.5)
11. (22.) Hungary (6.5, 6.5)
12. (20.) Iceland (6.5, 6.5)
13. (6.) Bosnia & Herzegovina (6.5, 6.5)
14. (23.) Spain (6.5, 6.5, minus)
15. (14.) Serbia (6.5, 6.5, minus)
16. (12.) Moldova (6.5, 6, plus)
17. (15.) France (6.25, 7)
18. (18.) Austria (6.25, 6.5, plus)
19. (8.) Ireland (6.25, 6, minus)
20. (11.) United Kingdom (6.25, 5.5, plus)
21. (21.) Finland (6, 6.5, plus)
22. (25.) Switzerland (6, 6, plus)
23. (10.) Germany (6, 5.5)
24. (7.) Greece (6, 5.5, minus)
25. (2.) Italy (5.25, 4.5)

I got Austria and Finland right, was one place off for Serbia, two off for France and Sweden and three off for Azerbaijan, Denmark, Slovenia, Switzerland and Ukraine. On the other hand, at least ten places off for Estonia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy and Lithuania. Italy truly deserves a special mention, since I was no less than 23 places off! As I already said, recognized the song’s musical value, but I largely give the song ratings according to how much I personally like the song and this one I didn’t like in the least.
As for the semifinals, I’d have picked Albania, Croatia, Poland and Turkey instead of Finland, Greece, Serbia and Switzerland from the first one and Slovakia instead of Ireland from the second one. Yes, actually had nine of my ten picks make it from the second semifinal. Unfortunately, Slovakia was number two in my classification. Then again, Turkey was number one in the first semifinal…

Now let me briefly explain my top ten picks, since I already said this year’s competition wasn’t as good as last year’s, so there’s no real reason to say something about each of the songs as I did then.
Ukraine had a good song, but a few others were better, so it needed something more in order to really grab my attention and the sand painting certainly did that. As I already said, it was the only entry truly worth remembering because of its show value, making me put it a full point above anyone else in that respect and say that, as a result, it had by far the best overall package.
Lithuania seemed to me to be this year’s typical Eurovision song. A really nice ballad and an outstanding voice made it have no true rivals as far as the song itself was concerned, at least in my opinion, but the lack of a show value meant it had to settle for second.
The Georgian entry was the only remaining “harder” one, so I probably gave it half a point extra because of that and as a result it climbed through the rankings. The rapping part bothered me, but not enough to detract from the fact that it represented genres that I like but are rarely seen on Eurovision.
Azerbaijan did better than in the semifinal, in the sense that the singers slipped up less, but it made no difference in my ratings. In truth, I’d have probably put them third if Turkey would have qualified, as Georgia would no longer have been the only representative of those genres of music, but for once they couldn’t have challenged for the top two positions in my classification.
The Swedish entry gets the “best of the rest” title, as I doubt I’ll be remembering any entry outside the top four for much longer. Already said that it had everything required to get lots of points but nothing to make it stand out, but should also add that I was quite bothered by the lyrics.
Seeing Estonia sixth reminds me that I sometimes don’t agree with my own classification. This is one such situation. I thought the song was just silly ever since I first heard it, but can’t deny that it’s catchy and they at least bothered to do something to give it a show value. Nothing worth remembering, but it was enough to make it end up several positions higher than it would have otherwise.
Russia may well be a second case of not agreeing with my own classification, though not quite so much. The song was all right and, though once again it was nothing worth remembering, they went through some trouble to give it a show value as well. What really bothered me was that he talked to the audience several times during the song, but not enough to make me put it any lower.
Thanks in part to the overall sound, but perhaps mainly due to its message, the Danish entry seemed to me to be the best of quite a long series of pretty good songs that had only a marginal show value, in the sense that there were several people on stage and they didn’t just sit there, but they didn’t do anything worth noting either. In fact you’ll see no less than eight entries that got 6.5 for both song and show from me.
Romania followed in Denmark’s footsteps in every way, including the message, but our entry seemed just a little below the Danish one in every respect.
Finally, I ended up ranking Slovenia as the best of no less than four entries with the exact same ratings because it had fewer things that bothered me than any of the other three.