Something sounds familiar in a recent Broadway in Boston ad… Hat tip to Ben for spotting this one during Sunday’s broadcast of the The Tony Awards: That’s a pretty impressive lineup hitting Beantown next year. Oh, and did you catch the song in the background? That would be a cover of Lithuania’s 2016 entry “I’ve Been Waiting for This Night” by Donny Montell. Kinda random, kinda awesome. [Read more…]
As we look forward to the next edition of the Eurovision Song Contest, let’s take a look back at how all the craziness began. Background Song Title: “Refrain” Artist: Lys Assia Country: Switzerland Year: 1956 Back in the mid-1950s, the European Broadcasting Union wanted to test out the live capabilities of television and radio across Europe. Italy’s Sanremo Music Festival, which began in 1951, was instantly popular and had a format that seemed adaptable for an international audience. This led to the first iteration of what became known as the Eurovision Song Contest. In 1956, representatives from seven countries gathered in Lugano, Switzerland to present a total of 14 songs. The first Eurovision winner was Lys Assia of Switzerland with her song “Refrain”: Legacy This edition of the Eurovision Song Contest was like no other, and not just because it was the first edition. Each country submitted two songs for consideration, making this the only Contest with multiple entries from a single country. Of the seven countries, Switzerland and Luxembourg were the only ones to have both of their entries performed by the same singer—Lys Assia and Michèle Arnaud, respectively. That’s not the only thing Switzerland and Luxembourg had in common […] [Read more…]
Are you thinking about going to Eurovision 2018? Here are some tips to maximize your ESC experience. I was fortunate enough to attend this year’s Eurovision Song Contest in Kyiv, Ukraine. Kyiv proved to be a capable host, but it’s understandable how Americans interested in going might have been intimidated by the prospect — there’s no real direct way to get to Kyiv and current foreign policy with Russia added a layer of excitement that had me bookmark the most direct route to the embassy. Now that we know Eurovision 2018 will be in Portugal, here are some tips you can use to prepare for your first Eurovision experience. 1. Figure out your itinerary My trip to Kyiv doubled as my honeymoon, so we decided to make it a European adventure. We flew into Budapest and spent a couple days there. We took the train up to Vienna, Austria, stayed there for the weekend, then took the train to Bratislava, Slovakia. We took a short flight from Bratislava to Kyiv in time for the first semi-final and stayed through the end of Eurovision weekend. Not only did we get to experience four European countries in a single go, we saved […] [Read more…]
A new favorite has emerged, according to the bookkeepers. Two semi-finals and 36 performances later, we now know the 20 acts that will join the Big Five and host country Ukraine in Saturday’s Grand Final of the 2017 Eurovision Song Contest. Here is the full running order of Saturday’s show: Eurovision Song Contest 2017 Grand Final Running Order Country Artist Song 1 Israel IMRI I Feel Alive 2 Poland Kasia Moś Flashlight 3 Belarus NAVIBAND Historyja majho žyccia 4 Austria Nathan Trent Running on Air 5 Armenia Artsvik Fly With Me 6 Netherlands O’G3NE Lights and Shadows 7 Moldova SunStroke Project Hey Mamma 8 Hungary Joci Pápai Origo 9 Italy Francesco Gabbani Occidentali’s Karma 10 Denmark Anja Nissen Where I Am 11 Portugal Salvador Sobral Amar Pelos Dois 12 Azerbaijan Dihaj Skeletons 13 Croatia Jacques Houdek My Friend 14 Australia Isaiah Firebrace Don’t Come Easy 15 Greece Demy This is Love 16 Spain Manel Navarro Do It for Your Lover 17 Norway JOWST Grab the Moment 18 United Kingdom Lucie Jones I’ll Never Give Up on You 19 Cyprus Hovig Gravity 20 Romania Ilinca feat. Alex Florea Yodel It! 21 Germany Levina Perfect Life 22 Ukraine O.Torvald Time 23 Belgium […] [Read more…]
When 10 of the entries are toss-ups for qualifying, you know it’s going to be a good Eurovision semi-final. In all the years we have covered the Eurovision Song Contest–both here and other sites–we have not encountered a semi-final quite as tricky to predict as this year’s second semi-final. There is very little consensus among the telESCope staff or the external metrics (YouTube views, odds, etc.), which means the bubble/margin of error is quite large. Regardless, we have picked ten entries that we expect to move on to Saturday’s Grand Final. Maybe “expect” is too strong a word, but we know mathematically that at least two of our guesses will be correct… Belarus Bulgaria Denmark FYR Macedonia Hungary Israel Netherlands Norway Romania Serbia Bulgaria, Denmark, and the Netherlands are the only entries we feel certain about, as they have been in the top 10 of all metrics throughout the season. The only other entry to receive all thumbs up from the telESCope staff in the most recent rankings (done Wednesday) was Austria, but those rankings were all near the cutoff and held down by lower rankings in other metrics. The other area of consensus was in the realm of what […] [Read more…]
Will we go 10-for-10 in our guesses for who will qualify out of the first Eurovision semi-final? After much number-crunching, YouTube watching, head scratching, and consensus building, we have finally compiled our data and have made our prediction for which ten acts we think will advance out of the first semi-final of the 2017 Eurovision Song Contest. The 10 acts that we think will advance, presented in alphabetical order, are: Armenia Australia Azerbaijan Belgium Finland Greece Latvia Moldova Portugal Sweden Let’s talk about our confidence levels, shall we? Azerbaijan, Belgium, Portugal, and Sweden are the acts in which we are most confident, as they have all appeared in the top 10 of every single metric we have measured in this process. Armenia, Australia, Greece, and Moldova we also feel pretty confident about. Each had one metric that fell out of the top 10, but have otherwise strong records. Australia is the iffiest of the group, as Isaiah’s rehearsal footage was his low-scoring metric, which may indicate a slide in popularity. Moldova has been just making it into the top 10 of most rankings, though one of our gut predictions has “Hey Mamma” as 14th. The two acts that are gambles on […] [Read more…]
We take one last look at the Big Five and Ukraine’s rehearsals and see how their YouTube numbers stack up. The six autoqualifiers for the Eurovision Song Contest — France, Germany, Italy, Spain, United Kingdom, and host country Ukraine — also had the chance to rehearse on the main stage in Kyiv twice in the last few days. Here is how their stats measure up to the rest of the field. Italy The Contest frontrunner currently1 holds the lead for both the first rehearsal and second rehearsal YouTube views. The first rehearsal clip for “Occidentali’s Karma” is the second-most-watched clip of the entire field, with more than 245,000 views. The second rehearsal, which happened Sunday, will probably cross 100,000 a few hours after this post goes live. Spain “Do It for Your Lover” currently sits in second place in this smaller group. The first rehearsal has more than 172,000 views, putting that clip in the top ten of first rehearsal footage. The second rehearsal clip is not as strong, landing in third for the autoqualifiers. France Alma’s “Requiem” has the most-watched official video of this group2, but she sits in third place with about 190,000 total views between the two […] [Read more…]
Croatia may be playing spoiler in the second semi-final, making this year’s Eurovision Song Contest that much more unpredictable. Sunday’s Eurovision Song Contest festivities in Kyiv included the second round of rehearsals for the Big Five and host country Ukraine, as well as the red carpet opening ceremony for this year’s competition. With 24 hours worth of data for the entire second semi-final field, let’s take a look at how the rankings of those videos may indicated popularity going into Thursday’s performances. Here are the top 10 videos from the second semi-final second rehearsals, as of 10:30pm CET / 4:30pm Eastern: Netherlands Serbia Croatia Bulgaria FYR Macedonia Denmark Belarus Romania Israel Austria Lithuania and Estonia dropped out of the top 10 from when we looked at the first rehearsal footage, and I fear this may be bad news for both countries. Lithuania sits in 13th and Estonia is in 15th, with at least 10,000 views behind Austria. In terms of the combined viewership for both rehearsals, here’s how the field shakes out: Netherlands FYR Macedonia Croatia Bulgaria Serbia Belarus Romania Lithuania Israel Denmark Croatia is poised to play spoiler based on earlier predictions. Hungary sits in 11th, trailing by fewer […] [Read more…]
It’s Belgium vs. Greece in the Eurovision First Semi-Final YouTube Rehearsal Race. The countries competing in the first semi-final of the Eurovision Song Contest had their second and final rehearsal on stage in Kyiv, Ukraine Thursday and Friday. Now that a full day has passed since Latvia closed out the round, let’s take a look at the YouTube data to speculate on outcomes this Tuesday. First, it should be noted that Eurovision changed up how they presented the second rehearsal clips. Rather than a two-minute clip including staging and backstage moments, each performance was a 40-second snippet showing how the performance will look on TV during the show. It works as a teaser, as well as clearing up some concerns that may arise if there are weird camera angles from off-stage that wouldn’t be part of the actual presentation. Here is how the countries rank as of 22:35 Central European Time / 4:35pm Eastern: Belgium Greece Sweden Poland Portugal Azerbaijan Montenegro Armenia Iceland Australia That’s quite a changeup from what happened after the first rehearsal. Finland and Latvia have fallen out of the top 10, though they are both within striking distance of Australia. Belgium is solidly in first place, […] [Read more…]
There is a clear YouTube front-runner after the first round of Eurovision semi-final rehearsals. The second set of rehearsals for the 2017 Eurovision Song Contest began Thursday in Kyiv, Ukraine. With more than 24 hours passing since the participants of the second semi-final wrapped their first set of rehearsals, let’s take a look at how those videos are faring on YouTube. Process nerds: the reason we’re doing a 24-hour delay in reporting data is to allow for the videos for those performing in the second half of the second semi-final to rack up views. As the data is about to show, an extra day on YouTube for those in the first half probably isn’t that much of an advantage. Here are the rankings1: Netherlands FYR Macedonia Romania Serbia Bulgaria Belarus Lithuania Israel Estonia Denmark The video for the Netherlands is currently dominating the first semi-final rankings, with more than 314,000 views. FYR Macedonia is behind by almost 200,000 views, and current first semi-final leader Greece has only 157,000 views. Either some loyal O’G3NE fans are hitting the repeat button, or we might want to add Netherlands to the list of challengers for the win at the Grand Final. Lithuania is […] [Read more…]
(c) What Else Is On 2016
