2023 NF Review & Preview: February, Week 2

So I'm starting a little new series called Review & Preview, where I'll look at the national finals that happened the week gone by, and also check out the national finals that will take place the next week. To be clear, this will NOT replace What We Know So Far; this blog series will not get updated once released, nor does it concern itself with internal selections. It will talk about televised national finals, and ONLY televised national finals. It will end on the week of the Melodifestivalen grand final, and possibly return next year if I can be bothered. So let's get into it, in alphabetical order.

Review

Czech Republic

The Czech Republic "returns" to the national final ESCZ, although I put quotation marks around 'returns' there, because the only thing that's really similar to the previous edition in 2022 is the number of artists being low. And the name of course.

Everything else has been revamped pretty much. They went from pre-recorded performances to live performances. Had an actual host as well as green room hosts.

Although I said this during the show and I think it's still true: this isn't so much a live national final, as it is a pitch by the Czech delegation to ČT, the Czech broadcaster, to increase Eurovision funding. Of course as an inaugural edition of the televised national final, it's not really fair to compare it to well-established or at least well-funded national finals like Melodifestivalen or Benidorm Fest, but being completely honest, this was *dire*.

Appreciate them getting an actual host for this, but he kept cracking jokes that weren't remotely funny, and I think even a school hall would've had better acoustics than this teeny-tiny stage. But it's not really the Czech delegation's fault I think; again, they just REALLY need funding.

Even then, the lineup had great variety, and there's almost certainly something in there that appeals to everyone. Soft pop, spooky pop, wholesome pop, guitar guy pop, and Slavic folk. That being said, ONE song certainly stands out more than the others.

But this was the review for the live show, which took place on the 30th last month, and the results weren't announced. So I'll save that for later. In the meantime, I think all five acts sung very well despite the quiet microphones, although even with the quasi-non-existent staging I think some of them could've worked on their stage presentations a little better. Regardless, for an inaugural live show with what I've been told was just about a week of planning and minimal funding, the national final came out quite nicely, and we await further developments.

Georgia

The Georgian "selection" is really only an artist selection, as the winner of The Voice Georgia is given a month to compose their Eurovision entry. Some people think it was rigged, although whether or not it was rigged I do think the winner was deserved.

Previously the Georgians had been using Georgian Idol for their artist selection, but that stopped in 2021 for obvious reasons, and in 2022 they internally selected Circus Mircus, one of the members of which was the last Georgian qualifier, Nika Kocharov. Although of course this time they weren't so lucky with qualification.

But speaking of selecting former Eurovision alumni, that's exactly what they did this year. Iru Khechanovi may not be an immediately familiar name to you, but she was in fact part of the group "Candy", which represented Georgia in Junior Eurovision 2011 with the song "Candy Music", and won the contest. Yerevan would of course prove to be a significant place for them, as they reunited during the past winners' medley in Junior Eurovision 2022. If you're wondering which of the Candy singers was Iru, she's the one with the glittery pink skirt, generally standing smack dab in the middle of the five.

For The Voice Georgia, she gave some very vocally strong and also diverse performances, covering pop songs like Around The World by Daft Punk or Smells Like Teen Spirit by Nirvana, but also Eurovision classics like Rise Like A Phoenix by Conchita Wurst and, for the final, Euphoria by Loreen.

One thing that made people suspicious of rigging was, for one, that she had pretty much outright won every single show on this season of The Voice Georgia, having received the largest televote out of every contestant be it the semi-final, the preliminaries before that or (obviously) the final. Another thing is that in the semi-final and final, while most contestants had to make do with a few dancers, a few chairs for intimate performances, or just nothing other than a microphone, Iru got to do a dance break for the Around The World performance, have a backing string quartet for both the semi-final and final, and even got the iconic snow for her Euphoria performance, not to mention being placed last in the running order in the final. Thus, some are now claiming that her rich father bought the show. I can't ascertain that; it's just what some people are saying. Don't shoot the messenger and all that.

That is not to say that there weren't other favourites in The Voice Georgia. Two other names that came up quite frequently were Lika Siradze and Likuna Tutisani, the former of which, like Iru, got over 40% of the televote in her own group during the semi-final, while Likuna Tutisani was in fact voted as the readers' favourites on Wiwibloggs. Siradze and Tutisani ended up 3rd and 4th respectively in the final ranking.

So what will Iru Khechanovi (who also goes by just Iru) do for Liverpool? Well, I think we can expect quality. For starters, she's working with Giga Kukhianidze for her song. Kukhianidze is known primarily in the world of JESC for composing great Georgian tracks like Candy Music, Mzeo, Let's Count The Smiles, and I Believe, their 2022 entry. What's more, Iru *herself* was a lyricist on I Believe. We don't know the genre yet, but I think a certain degree of quality can be expected, since Georgia's finally bringing their big Junior Eurovision guns to the adult contest. The song is expected to come out next month.

In the meantime, you can follow Iru on Instagram (and possibly Twitter by the same tag if she ever comes back) @irukhechanovi, where she'll possibly post about developments with the song.

Ireland

Ireland returns to the Eurosong national final, on the Late Late Show hosted by Ryan Tubridy. 6 contestants, like last year, although unlike last year, the fan favourite did not win. There was however a VERY big name which many were worried could pull a The Rasmus @ UMK22 and just win the whole thing. As we now know, that didn't happen.

That big name was John Lydon, who was part of the Sex Pistols as the lead vocalist, and was also known as Johnny Rotten. Now, I'm neither Irish nor British (nor old enough to have heard of Johnny Rotten), so you'll have to bear with me here as I try to tell history about someone who's virtually unknown in my cultural sphere.

John Lydon, although living in the UK and speaking with an English accent, is of Irish origin, hence why he was able to obtain Irish citizenship and thus apply for Eurosong. He caused quite a bit of controversy (as he tends to do) by decrying the Eurovision Song Contest in an interview with RTE, calling Eurovision music "awful" among other not-so-nice things. Michael Kealy, the Irish head of delegation, attempted to defend this by saying that Lydon had been joking. Furthermore, in prior statements, Lydon also said that he does not want to be identified as Irish.

His song, "Hawaii", did not generate very good comments either; Måns Zelmerlöw on the Eurovisioncast podcast said that he thinks the song is strange and that he does not understand it. At the live national final, comments from the studio professionals included "he struggled in the low notes", "he struggled with the high notes" and "I liked his speaking voice".

This most likely had a visible effect on the audience, as despite being the most streamed and viewed song from Eurosong 2023, John Lydon did not get a single set of 12 points, or any points higher than 6 for that matter. Lydon, who fronted the band "Public Image Ltd", ended up with 18 points and 4th place overall.

The top 3, in ascending order, included K Muni & ND with their afrobeats song "Down In The Rain" which many predicted would come last or second to last; Connolly with "Midnight Summer Night" which was a huge favourite among Eurofans; and just pipping Connolly by 2 points, Dublin-based band Wild Youth with Swedish-penned "We Are One", who won the Irish jury vote and the televote. The latter vote win was largely speculated to be Wild Youth's local popularity, although apparently one WY fan posted on Twitter that she had voted for them over *100* times. Connolly meanwhile won the international jury and received 10 points in the Irish jury vote and televote.

Special mention to Adgy with "Too Good For Your Love", who was an initial favourite alongside Connolly, but only ended up 5th in the national final. After reaching a retweet goal on Twitter, he added a 20-second Irish-language part in his song, making it the first time the Irish language has been sung in a national final since 1999. Nonetheless, despite minor plagiarism allegations, Wild Youth will represent Ireland in Liverpool, in the first half of the first semi-final.

Latvia

Latvia had its first semi-final on the 4th, although if you ask me, it's a pretty pointless semi-final, since it only eliminates a whole *4* participants ahead of the final.

At one point, the current running televote count was revealed, and it looked like this:

In the end, Inspo, who had been a big Twitter fan favourite, fell to the bottom 4 and was eliminated, along with the rest of the bottom 3 here. And of course the elephant in the room, Sudden Lights receiving an absolutely HUGE televote, coincidentally with the only song that has any Latvian-language lyrics in it (alongside a great live performance). Although the final televote percentage was not revealed at the end, so we do not know what exactly changed in the rankings other than Inspo dropping.

Lithuania

Lithuania also had their first semi-final on the 4th, but unlike Latvia, they had had two prior heats where more candidates had been eliminated. In this semi-final, there were 10 candidates, half of which were eliminated while the other half would go on to the final.

Rūta Mur, who had won the first heat with 12 points from both the jury and televote, also won this semi-final, albeit only receiving 10 points from the jury and televote.

The 12 points from the jury went to Petunija with "Love Of My Life", who had been a big fan favourite but was not greeted so warmly by the televote, who had only given her 7 points here. Meanwhile, the 12 points in the televote went to the group Il Senso with "Sparnai".

The other two qualifiers were Gabrielius Vagelis with "Šauksmas" (which had placed second behind Rūta Mur in heat 1), as well as Justė Kraujelytė with "Need More Fun" which had placed fourth in heat 1. Interestingly, Alen Chicco, who had placed third in heat 1, did not qualify in this semi-final, nor did semi-fan favourite Joseph June with "Vacuum".

Norway

Norway had their prestigious national final, Melodi Grand Prix, unusually early for them. It took place on the 4th, when MGP usually takes place in mid or even late February. Many format changes were also introduced, including the removal of duels and pre-qualifiers, as well as the introduction of (optional) autotune, an international jury worth 50% of the vote in the final à la Melodifestivalen, and dramatic close-ups of artists waiting to be told whether they qualified.

Elsie Bay (Death Of Us, MGP 2022) returned, as did Ulrikke (Attention, Norway 2020). Initially there had been rumours of KEiiNO returning, but of course that did not happen in the end. JOWST (Norway 2017) returned with an African-American artist named Byron Williams Jr., said on an interview that he would like to better his result in 2017, and didn't even qualify for the MGP final. Kate Gulbrandsen (Norway 1987) returned with a song by Kjetil Mørland, and also did not qualify. There was also a shock in the third semi-final, when neither of the two major fan favourites Akuvi and Maria Celin qualified.

Regardless, the final of MGP took place on the 4th. The ultimate winner was Alessandra Mele, a singer of Italian origin, with the song "Queen Of Kings". Part of her success may have been due to a TikTok posted by Ukrainian Eurofan eurovanya, where he posted a video of Miss Ukraine from Miss Universe 2022 with Queen Of Kings in the background. This TikTok subsequently went viral and the song with it, with 5.7 million streams on Spotify as of writing this.

In the final, Alessandra racked up 104 points from the international jury and 129 points from the televote (for perspective: Ulrikke got 78 points in the televote, while 3rd in the televote only got 43 points), winning with 233 points in total and almost 100 points more than the runner-up, which was Ulrikke with 138 points. Atle Pettersen got 3rd place overall, with 94 points in the jury but only 28 points in the televote. Alessandra will now represent Norway in Liverpool.

Spain

Spain returns to the national final Benidorm Fest, after having had a booming top 3 result with Chanel in Turin. And speaking of Benidorm Fest 2022, wouldn't you know it, the winner this year was also present last year, albeit with a VERY different song.

Before we get to the two main contenders, a few honorable mentions (opinionated):

1. Fusa Nocta - Mi Familia: a very modern track, with influences of flamenco and trap. Unfortunately, not only was the staging too much, Fusa also did not seem capable of handling the vocals. Lots of intense choreography, being lifted around, a literal car on the stage, it was just too much, and it reflected in Fusa's vocals. She did not sound good in the semi-final, and the improvements in the final were too little too late.

2. Megara - Arcadia: VERY different from anything else this year. A rock-type song, with a video game themed staging. The lead singer was dressed very uniquely, with a clear cyberpunk theme (also seen in the dancers), but what perhaps let me down a bit was the guitarist and drummer being extremely underdressed for the occasion. I mean, a black t-shirt and regular pants? Really? Regardless, it stood out very much, and I wish it could've been a winner contender, although they still got 4th place which is certainly not a disgrace. Shoutout to the (female) lead singer kissing one of the (also female) dancers halfway through as well.

3. Vicco - Nochentera: a very radio-friendly song, which if my memory serves me correctly is still the most streamed BF2023 song. The music video gave visions of being at some sort of party or rave, although that wasn't quite reflected in the live staging. Her outfit showed way too much thigh for a song that wasn't *that* type of dance song.

The voting system was the same as last year, with 50% jury vote, 20% "demoscopic" vote and 30% televote via SMS or calls. RTVE claims that the demoscopic jury is selected based on a group of people representative of all age groups in Spain, although it is not known exactly how they chose those people as they voted very differently to the televote.

After the results were revealed live on each night of the semi-finals, it became clear that there were only two realistic front-runners who could win Benidorm Fest and represent Spain in Eurovision 2023: Agoney and Blanca Paloma. The two were the clear outright winners of their respective semi-finals, and also had the most prepared staging package and live vocals.

And sure enough, on the final on the 5th, those two came out on top, with Blanca Paloma replicating her result in the semi-final, and winning the televote and jury vote while coming second in the demoscopic jury, getting 169 points out of a possible 176. Agoney meanwhile came second with 145 points. Blanca Paloma, having participated in Benidorm Fest 2022 with "Secreto De Agua", a slightly flamenco-inspired ballad, and coming 5th, will now represent Spain in Eurovision 2023 with "Eaea", a modern flamenco song with electronic highlights and Arabic influences.

Sweden

Sweden began their selection this week, with the first heat of Melodifestivalen having taken place in Gothenburg. The two direct finalists were Jon Henrik Fjällgren, Arc North feat. Adam Woods with "Where You Are (Sávežan)", and Tone Sekelius with "Rhythm Of My Show". Victor Crone with "Diamonds" and Elov & Beny with "Raggen Går" went to the semi-final (still known by most fans as Andra Chansen), while Rejhan, Eva & Ewa, and LouLou LaMotte did not qualify.

Previous Melodifestivalen winner Cornelia Jakobs also performed an extended version of Hold Me Closer at this heat.

Preview

Hoo boy, next week's the BIG one. Super Saturday, some might say. A total of NINE shows taking place more or less concurrently, although some might be perceived as less important than the others. Regardless, here's what you need to know for week 3 of February:

Croatia

The Croatian national final, Dora, is happening on the 11th of February. It starts at 20:05, although the big favourite, "Nevera (Lei, Lei)" by Harmonija Disonance has been placed last in the running order.

Czech Republic

As mentioned earlier, the Czech national final took place on the 30th last month, although the results will only be announced on the 7th. As of writing this, you can still vote! Go to escz2023.com and vote for your favourite, and remember to validate the result by checking your email afterwards. It is not known how exactly the announcement will be made, but if previous years of ESCZ are any indication, it will be a video that will be premiered on the official Eurovision Youtube channel. The big favourite, both with international fans and with viewers in the Czech Republic, is "My Sister's Crown" by female group Vesna, featuring lyrics in English, Czech, Ukrainian, and Bulgarian.

Denmark

Denmark will be having their version of the Melodi Grand Prix on the 11th, with 8 participants and taking place at the Næstved Arena in the city of Næstved. It starts at 20:00 CET. Current favourites include Eyjaa, Reiley and Maia Maia, although if you ask me I think Søren Torpegaard Lund could genuinely win the whole thing, since the song references the 1957 Danish entry and the demographic which actually watches DMGP tends to be older, but we'll see.

Estonia

Another national final that will happen on the 11th is Eesti Laul, the Estonian national final. The national final will commence at 18:30 CET, the earliest of all the national finals on the 11th. The two main favourites to look out for are Alika with "Bridges", a dramatic piano ballad that was co-written by the co-author of Arcade and Tout L'Univers, and Ollie with "Venom", a pop-rock song that has hints of Nickelback in it.

In Eesti Laul, the system is that the first round of voting will be a 50/50 split between the televote and an international jury, then the top 3 of that ranking will then go onto a televote-only superfinal, where only the Estonian public will decide the Estonian representative for Eurovision. If the jury is as jazz-loving as they were in Eesti Laul 2022, we could potentially see Anett x Fredi with "You Need To Move On", a comforting jazz number, enter the superfinal.

Other fan favourites include "Lighthouse" by Sissi and "Monsters" by Bedwetters, however almost everyone agrees that only Alika and Ollie have a realistic chance of representing Estonia in Liverpool. The bookmakers put Alika FAR ahead of anyone else, at *62%* chance of victory, although even so Ollie is second, with a 12% chance.

Italy

ANOTHER national final that will conclude on the 11th is the Italian Festival Di Sanremo. (It selects a Eurovision act, so it's a de facto national final. Shut up.) So far no one outside of the press have heard the songs yet, but some favourites at the moment include Marco Mengoni ("L'Essenziale", Italy 2013), as well as Ultimo, Giorgia and Colapesce & Dimartino.

Although that's just the final of Sanremo; if you were looking for something to watch during the week, Sanremo starts on the 7th and runs every day at 21:00 CET for varying lengths. It is hardly uncommon to see Sanremo end at 2 or 3am, or even beyond that. There be no shortage of guests; from big Italian names like Maneskin and Mahmood & Blanco to huge international names like the Black Eyed Peas, (allegedly) Madonna, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, and even the former First Lady of France, Carla Bruni. Reports are stating that all of these names will appear at the prestigious music festival.

Latvia

Latvia's the second Baltic country to have their national final conclude on the 11th, with Supernova starting at 20:10 CET. In response to Sudden Lights' huge televote on the semi-final, the group has now risen to 2nd in the Supernova winning odds, although (inexplicably) Patrisha remains the bookmakers' favourite to represent Latvia in Liverpool. Some other favourites include Luize and Raum.

Lithuania

Lithuania's Pabandom Iš Naujo also takes place on the 11th, although it is only the second semi-final. During this semi-final, there will be 10 acts, with names such as Beatrich, Gebrasy, and Monika Linkytė, and 5 of them will be eliminated in this semi-final. The show starts at 20:00 CET.

Malta

Malta is returning to their national final MESC for 2023, and it will take place, wait for it, on the 11th. Although before that, the semi-final will take place on the 9th, where 16 out of 24 artists will be voted to enter the final. Both shows will be hosted by Maltese Eurovision alumni Glen Vella and Amber Bondin. Some favourites include The Busker with "Dance (Our Own Party)" and Brooke Borg (who goes by the mononym Brooke) with "Checkmate". Aidan with "Reġina" was also a favourite before he was disqualified for violating MESC rules for excessive advertisement.

eurovisionworld.com notes that the only thing we can confirm for sure on the 11th is the Maltese artist for ESC2023, because if last year was any indication, the winning artist's song may be changed to a completely new one for Eurovision.

Romania

Wouldn't you believe it, we have another national final on the 11th. Fortunately this one's relatively short, and starts pretty early. Selecția Națională 2023 will be broadcasted at 19:30 CET, and will feature 12 finalists. The winner will be determined solely by public vote, unlike the 1/7 voting power that the televote had last year.

Current favourites include Theodor Andrei with "D.G.T.", Aledaida with "Bla Bla Bla", and Andreea D Folclor Orchestra with "Perinița Mea".

Sweden

Sweden continues their search for their next representative with another heat of Melodifestivalen, this time in Linköping as part of the nationwide tour. This heat will feature Wiktoria, Eden, Uje Brandelius, Panetoz, Tennessee Tears, Maria Sur and Theoz, the latter of which already participated in Melodifestivalen 2022 with "Som Du Vill".

Current favourites from this heat to go direkt till final are Wiktoria and Maria Sur, although rumours have claimed that Wiktoria's competing song this time is very different from her previous efforts. Maria Sur is a young Ukrainian singer who had previously been on The Voice Ukraine, and who has since moved to Sweden and is now signed to Sony Music Sweden.

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So that's a round-up of the national finals that happened this week, and the national finals that will happen next week! Do let me know what you think of these national finals. Here's the same thing, in video format:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGTiGGFKjyI