Well, the first semi final took place last night. And THANKFULLY, the best song rightfully qualified for Saturday’s final.
We were actually pleased with 7 of the 10 songs that progressed to the final. Iceland, Moldova, Albania, Russia, Portugal, Serbia, and Greece. We were disappointed that Malta, Slovakia, and Finland didn’t do better though.
The show was spectacular, and the atmosphere in the arena was amazing, as you probably could tell on television. Iceland is certainly one of the fan favourites this year, and Hera Bjork got the best reaction in the arena on the night. Perhaps that’s why they chose to announce Iceland as the last of the ten qualifiers. It was a horribly tense moment!
We’ve been in Oslo for 5 days now, making the most of all of what’s been happening and going on. It’s been a Eurovision bubble, with dress rehearsals during the day, and parties during the evening. We were planning on writing a lot more Eurovision coverage on here, but to be honest, dress rehearsals and parties is all we’ve been doing really, and we’re not entirely sure how interested anyone would be in reading about that!
We went to the first dress rehearsal of semi final 2 this afternoon. It’s a stronger line up of songs than in semi final 1, and we’re worried that some of our favourites like Ireland and Denmark will struggle to qualify, simply because there seems to be so many ‘guaranteed’ qualifiers in this line up. As with last night, there is no opening act, and not much of an interval act either really. Which is disappointing – couldn’t they wheel out all of their schlager stars at least once?! Where’s Guri or Wenche?!
The best party we’ve been to so far was Saturday night at Ballroom. There, the particpants from Iceland, Estonia, Switzerland, and Ukraine performed. Hera Bjork performed a number of tracks from her album, including ‘Someday’, which was amazing obviously! And we actually met one of the composers of ‘Someday’ too, at the official welcome party at Oslo city hall on Sunday night. Naturally we thanked him on behalf of the whole world, for his genius! He also co-wrote the Irish entry this year. Monday night we spent the evening at the Euroclub venue. It’s a bit small this year and can get quite crowded, but hip flasks of vodka are helping to block out any annoyance at that! Tonight we’re torn between Euroclub again (where a lot of artists are performing) or gay club Latter (where Alexander Stenerud, Jenny Jenssen, and Queentastic are apparently performing!). We’ll probably try to do both.
Best musical discovery we’ve made so far has been the 7th Heaven remix of the Norwegian entry, ‘My Heart Is Yours’ – amazing!
