Weaver's Week 2021-05-23

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This edition of the Week was posted on the evening of Friday 21 May, before the contest finals took place.

And we're back, friends.

Contents 1 The Eurovision Song Festival, Semi-final 1 1.1 NPO/AVROTROS for EBU, 18 May 2021 1.2 Tell us about the hosts 1.3 Who's going through 2 What's the alternative 3 De Eurovisie Songfestival Semifinale II 3.1 NPO/AVROTROS for EBU, 20 May 2021 3.2 Who is in the final? 3.3 What else happened 4 The final running order 5 In other news

The Eurovision Song Festival, Semi-final 1

NPO/AVROTROS for EBU, 18 May 2021

Six songs must fall tonight.

We go into the show certain of five to progress, and we'll come back to those later. But who will not make it? Goodness alone knows. We can – perhaps – tentatively say that two are unlikely to go through, a couple of others look very shaky. But the remainder? Goodness knows.

Who didn't make it?

"Amen" – Ana Soklic for RTVSLO (described on screen as "Slovenia"), the naff one. Going second in the Eurovision Song Contest is always a challenge. We've had the opening film, we've met our hosts. Duncan Laurence has performed his new single, and the first performance is in the bag. And... the show continues, and our energy begins to splutter down.

"Amen" is a good song. It's slick and competent, it hits some good emotional notes. The staging, though, was empty – Ana seems to be alone in the universe. They made great use of backing vocals, sticking a whole gospel choir onto the backing tape. But they didn't represent these voices on stage, not from a backing dancer, not from ghosts and shadows on the stage walls. A tough draw in a tough semi-final proved insurmountable. Even Ana's cute touches couldn't save her – she's seen with a cat in the postcard before the song, and seems ready to segue into Surie's "Storm" at the end.

"Here I stand" – Vasil for MKRTV ("North Macedonia") It's the one with the mirrorball vest.

Another slick and competent song; we didn't get much emotion from the Heart of Eurovisionia, but did get some emotion from other parts of the anatomy. Augmented reality graphics made Vasil look as though he was being turbocharged by magic, and then he whipped off his suspiciously heavy jacket to reveal a disco ball!

"Here I stand" was, like "Amen", one this column had almost written off beforehand. The presentation is a bit tawdry, it's about fifteen years behind the fashion. We can envisage juries liking this song but not loving it, and there's not a great call for televoters to pick up the phone and send an SMS.

"Amnesia" – Roxen for TVR ("Romania"), the one with the guys in hoods. Every year, there's one Performance with a capital P. Tries to do High Art on the Eurovision stage. It's this column's absolute favourite bit of Eurovision, the way we can go from a pedestrian disco number to this. And, every year without fail, the High Art falls flatter than this column's singing.

Roxen is a young singer, put in a world full of people trying to destroy her, deny her identity, gaslighting her. But she's stronger than that, able to shake off the demons and eventually make them bow down to her. If you get the message, it's a powerful piece: if you don't, it's a decent strong performed adequately.

Where did this go wrong? A technical fault on Monday night meant that Roxen had the wrong beat through her earpiece. She appeared to be out of rhythm, half-a-beat behind the backing track. The juries will have spotted this, and Roxen was allowed a second performance with no technical hitches. But the same happened to GoA and Destiny, both hit by rhythm problems but it didn't show in their performances. Roxen visibly struggling, and the more seasoned professionals sorting the glitch themselves, will surely have hurt her jury score. And with no televote to speak of... we fear this will have come last, and it deserves better.

"Tik tok" – Albina for HRT ("Croatia"). The second half of the draw was chock-full of women singing relatively fast and optimistic songs. One of them, surely, had to fall by the wayside. Albina's song got that dodgy honour.

Though it's another perfectly serviceable disco number, the vocal talent wasn't as good as many of its competitors. Albina tended to go for a shouty vocal, and often got buried by the backing vocals. These things tend to get picked up by at least one person on each national jury – and with just five people voting, one hater will damage your score tremendously. The televote may have been interested in the language change, and in the underclothed male backing dancers (just about the only underclothed men of the night), but didn't come through strongly enough.

Those two we ranked as "unlikely" to get through. The last two non-qualifiers were in the wrong place at the wrong time. It's like the opening round of Fall Guys: there's lots of room to reach the end, but there's no joy in being 11th across the line when the top 10 qualify.

"Maps" – Lesley Roy for RTÉ ("Ireland"), the one with the paper cutouts.

Frankly, they tried too hard with the staging. It's an intricate set, of little paper sculptures and a flickbook, a miniaturised area to impress Father Dougal and Peter Baynham. But they didn't seem to have confidence in their gimmick, abandoning it after two minutes to finally give some close-ups and let Lesley take the main floor. It's a messy transition, they chose to show how the paper sculptures worked – we never saw the projector powering "Heroes", we never saw the steps when Sergei Lazarev climbed the wall.

We got the impression that RTÉ didn't have confidence that Lesley could carry "Maps" off with the power of her singing abilities. They may have been right: feedback from the Monday jury final was profoundly negative, and that Monday performance carries half the marks.

"Technicolour" – Montaigne for SBS ("Australia"), the one with the catsuits. Okay, what's "hyperpop" when it's at home, and why did Céilí Rae Minogue describe "Technicolour" as hyperpop? It's a high-energy mashup of all sorts of contemporary sounds. Distorted noises, syncopated and non-repeating beats, never quite know what's going to happen in the next bar. It's achingly contemporary, the voice from twenty minutes in your future.

Montaigne's performance is equally stylised: she and her four dancers wear space-age catsuits with a sparkly shoulder decoration. While the music isn't particularly glitchy, there's distortion on the image as if the camera cannot cope with everything being thrown at it. The result is a 1970s vision of how 2021 would look.

As an art project, it's brilliant. As a song, it's memorable and catchy, though we're still not convinced Montaigne's vocal performance was flawless. The problem is that it's achingly contemporary, it's ahead of the fashion. Eurovision viewers – and the Eurovision juries – are the general public, mass appeal songs always do well. This will have been marked down by at least two people on each jury, one who picked up the vocal flaws, one who just didn't get the idea. And that sunk the Aussies below the waterline. The song – always marginal to qualify – didn't pull enough televote points to get through. Had it been in the Thursday semi-final, we suspect it may have made the Saturday final.

Tell us about the hosts

Four of them this year.

Chantal Janzen is the blonde woman, the safe pair of hands. She hosts The Voice of Holland of Holland.

Jan Smit is the bloke, the one in the sharp suit. He's a singer, from De Toppers; and he hosts the variety singing show Beste Zangers.

Edsilia Rombley is the brunette woman, the one with an incredible singing voice. She represented NPO at the 1998 competition, and still performs as one of the Ladies of Soul.

Nikkie de Jager is the stylish woman, tall and exceptionally well-groomed. She is a famous make-up and beauty vlogger, and a television star with a regular booking for Wie is de Mol?.

To the best of our knowledge, Nikkie is the first trans woman to host the show. Edsilia is (at least) the second woman of colour to host the senior contest, following Arabella Kiesbauer in Vienna 2015. (We hedge our bets on this one, because we don't know whether some of the Jewish hosts describe themselves as "of colour"; this is a controversial topic amongst Jews, and this column's not going to resolve it.)

What is certain: the hosts have been learning from Eurovision Again, and didn't make any unfunny jokes. Get the job done, play it straight, celebrate the event but don't cause any unnecessary offence.

We also meet the new EBU chief scrutineer, Martin Österdahl.

Who's going through

"Discotheque" by The Roop for LRT ("Lithuania"), the yellow one. It's a slow-beat dance song, the sort of 100bpm song they might have put on in a late-90s club near closing time.

"Russian woman" by Manizha for C1R ("Russia"), the one with the giant doll. It's another song going at a slow beat, talking an unashamedly feminist message. Takes forever to get anywhere near a hook, that makes the pay-off more powerful.

"Voices" by Tusse for SVT ("Sweden"), the red one. Turns out that we've heard this one on the infinite dial, it's an anthem while we're hearing it, but fades quickly from memory. Red is the dominant colour, Tusse's wearing it, the stage turns red at times. Beware of some very bad flashing lights on this one – we have to give a Wrong Sort of Shiny warning for just about every performance, but this one's egregious.

"El Diablo" by Elena Tsagrinou for CyBC ("Cyprus"), the one with the mirror. This aired straight after "Maps", and showed up the dodgy singing and strange staging. It came three after "Technicolour", and was a more accessible performance by women in catsuits.

"Fallen angel" by Tix for NRK ("Norway"), the one with the angel in chains. Do you see what they did there? From the devil to the angel. It's a striking visual, it's got a key-change of joy, but we still find the song as boring as anything.

"The wrong place" by Hooverphonic for VRT ("Belgium"), the black one. Dark and moody, it's the night's one bone for the beard-stroking vinyl-collecting 6 Music crowd. Takes this column back to our callow youth, when we saw Hooverphonic in one of Birmingham's more seedy clubs.

"Set me free" by Eden for KAN ("Israel"), the one with the hair. Back to the dance numbers, it's an engaging and professional performance. She went for the highest note in Eurovision history, and made it, but it's a gimmick that takes time and energy away from the song. Something had to qualify in 10th place: was this it?

"Mata Hari" by Efendi for Íctimai ("Azerbaijan"), the one with the Egyptian imagery. Another overdose of flashing lights, with a very ethnic performance to remind us where they're from.

"Shoom" by GoA for UA-PBC ("Ukraine"), the unique one. Orville the Duck's feathers, Xena's chakras, Lesley Roy's discarded mystic forest. It's in the local "white singing", unlike anything we've heard at Eurovision since TVP's 2019 entry. The song has internal tempo changes, drops beats all over the place, and ends up looking like The Sprinting Man. If we were a fashion nerd, we'd describe this as "ethnic hyperpop".

"Je me casse" by Destiny for PBS ("Malta"), the one with the barre. Yes! Yes! Yes! "Excuse my French", this is ace. We get glitter coming out of the set! And the winner's pyro curtain, as seen on "Only teardrops". This still feels like a potential winner.

Three automatic finalists were also previewed.

"Zitti e buoni" by Måneskin for RAI ("Italy"), the glam rock number. This will have more flashing lights than shirts.

"I don't feel hate" by Jendrik for ARD/NDR ("Germany"), the one with the dancing hand. Jazzy number, someone's going to love it.

"Birth of a new age" by Jeangu Macrooy for NOS/AVROTROS ("Netherlands"), the gospel song that sounds effortless. If Destiny doesn't win, will Jeangu manage it?

What's the alternative

What would Eurovision look like with commercial breaks every few minutes? The Free European Song Competition last weekend gave us a nightmare vision into the future. It went out on German-language private station ProSieben.

Sixteen songs competed for our attention, as many as in your average Junior Eurovision Song Contest. But while the EBU's event is complete in a Sunday afternoon, Free ESC went on, and on, and on. Four and a quarter hours of this. Endless calls to vote, snarky postcards reinforcing stereotypes, and a full six minutes of commercials and ProSieben promos every twenty minutes or so.

The winning song, "The one" by Rea Garvey, was one of the best songs, and we cheer his win. Much was made when the "England" jury chose to blank Amy MacDonald representing Scotland. Anyone who's followed Amy's career will know this isn't a surprise at all: England has not understood Amy MacDonald since 2007. This is England's problem.

"The one" had already been a hit in Europe last year. It wasn't the only current hit – Milow represented Belgium with a song in Germany's current airplay top 40, Amy MacDonald was in the airplay lists late last year, and Hugel promoted their new single already big in France. Danny Vera sung "Roller coaster", a monster Dutch hit from 2019: we were surprised that this didn't win.

Free ESC chose to give all ten points from all of its juries. We'd completely forgotten how long this took – even without thinking about the inevitable delays from contributions over internet video conferencing.

It's not immediately clear if Ireland gets to host Free ESC next year, but if you've got a cattle shed somewhere in County Donegal, and want to be the centre of attention for an evening, apply to ProSieben. Maybe the local broadcasters will show it on Virgin Media 2.

More presently, we've got a venue for Junior Eurovision, and it's La Seine Musicale, a large concert hall on an island in the middle of the river. We've also got a date: 19 December. December! A month later than usual!

De Eurovisie Songfestival Semifinale II

NPO/AVROTROS for EBU, 20 May 2021

"Song" was the motif for Tuesday's show: the opening performance, the interval act, and plenty of the performances we're marking. Thursday's motif was "Performance", as dance was offered by the producers for their filler, and the songs were of a slightly different sort. Fewer bangers, more high art.

There are highs, and there are lows. Ten songs had to go through, which meant seven left the competition.

"The lucky one" Uku Suviste for EER ("Estonia") The one with the dishevelled waiter. It's a moody song, Uku performs against a single spotlight. Though the song has an emotional life near the end, it was always going to be a tough sell for the audience and require a strong jury vote. And when you're off key in the jury final...

"Omaga" Benny Cristo for CT (shown on screen as "Czech Republic", don't tell Mr. Osman) The one with the yellow jacket. This was always going to be a televote song, positive vibes and good times for the audience. Benny's performance was breathless throughout, and he leant a lot on the backing singers. The staging didn't do him any favours, walking around the huge stage area before heading out to the smaller satellite terminal.

"Amen" Vincent Bueno for ÖRF ("Austria") The one with the beams of light. Something has to finish eleventh every night, and this feels like Thursday's first runner-up. Vincent sounds like musical theatre – clear enunciation, building a classy song to a tissue-crunching climax, and delivering the bold finish as though he believed it. The light beams are simple, the silhouette effect is simple, but it all looks the part. Would have done Saturday proud.

"The ride" Rafal for TVP ("Poland") The one with hand-held torches. "It's Patrick Kielty trying to be Penfold," said Emma Laslett on Quizzy Dan's stream. Looks more like Suggs to us, and we certainly found the performance closer to Madness than Stationery World of Fun. If ÖRF had been jury catnip, this was jury water-spray. A flat range to begin with, shaky vocals, and a performance that felt like a poor copy of the video.

"You" Tornike Kipiani for GPB ("Georgia") The one from the Daz advert. Simple, crisp white shirt, very chilled vibe, soft and contemplative – but the song never got out of second gear. A shame: GPB are always reliable in the Junior contest, but send something self-indulgent to the Senior show.

"The moon is rising" Samanta Tina for LVT ("Latvia") The one with the kaleidoscope background. Samanta is a great singer – commanding vocals, stage presence, power... but what's the message of the song? The staging was dizzyating, we found it barely watchable, and the song wasn't that strong to begin with.

"Øve os på hinanden" Fyr og Flamme for DR ("Denmark") The one with the guy in the string vest. "It's the eighties coming back," sang Ruffus in the 2003 contest, perhaps thinking of works like this one. It's inoffensive and earnest, had a groundswell of support, but not enough to get through to Saturday. That's probably for the best, one thing we've learned from Eurovision Again was how some things are best left in a potato field.

Who is in the final?

"Adrenalina" Senhit and Flo Rida for SMRTV ("San Marino") The one with the rapper. It's a slick and joyous piece of light rap, got the night off well. Mr. Rida adds some extra experience, a little bit of heft on what could be a lightweight song.

"Last dance" Stefania for ERT 2.0 ("Greece") The one with green screen effects. First time around, we were blown away by the remarkable visuals, which ERT believe in and use to the max. None of this pull-away for the final chorus, Stefania and the stage-hands commit to their gimmick. Second time around, we concentrated on the song, which is 45 seconds of build up and then a contemporary "pop drop" breakdown – nothing to surprise the jury, we think.

"Sugar" Natalia Gordienko for TRM ("Moldova") The one with the laser background. It's disco-by-numbers, would have got lost on Tuesday, but stood out well enough tonight. For TRM, the victory is turning up on Saturday night, and making sure millions of people across the continent have to ask, "Where's Moldova"?

"Ten years" Daði og Gagnamagnið for RÚV ("Iceland") The one with the jumpers. Six of them perform, wearing matching jumpers, and in front of 8-bit computer graphics (and some rendered using more modern technology). Always something interesting happening, plenty of smiles, especially the final ten seconds. One of last year's potential winners could still pull off the win.

"Loco loco" Hurricane for RTS ("Serbia") The one with hairography and Sugababes 4.5. – Hair! It's a relentless performance, it starts and never feels like the three young women are going to stop. Strong vocals, but there's a lot of empty stage between them. Something had to get through in 10th place: was this it?

"Karma" Anxhela Peristeri for RTSH ("Albania") The one with the wind machine. It's a great opening – big note, red light... and the song doesn't go far afterwards. The token Balkan ballad, a style of music nobody ever hears outside Eurovision, and a style loved by juries. Tight camera shots help to hide the very empty stage.

"Love is on my side" The Black Mamba for RTP ("Portugal") The one with the hat. The story of his life, compressed into three minutes. As much as we might be put off by the jazz stylings, the song grows and grows, we find ourselves humming along, and the rock gospel ending is properly uplifting. Could be a dark horse for the top half.

"Growing up is getting old" Victoria for BRT ("Bulgaria") The one from the Christmas advert. Victoria sits on a huge rock floating in the sea, her father is there a photo. Dream sequence vibes, at times we're reminded of Robin from The Muppet Show, sitting halfway up the stairs. Victoria looks and sounds like a star, and could well have won with last year's song "Tears getting sober". If we're in the market for a slow winner this year, look no further.

"Dark side" Blind Channel for YLE ("Finland") The one from Linkin Park circa 2001. Even if the chorus sounds a bit like Coldplay, the aesthetic is turn-of-the-century nu metal. The lighting! The energy! The whoomph! This is polished and organic, and very accessible, and not as scary as it could be.

"Tout l'univers" Gjon's Tears for SRG/SSR ("Switzerland") The one with the white sculpture. Slick future zone staging, strong song, strong singing. It's one to divide opinion: you'll either get it or you won't. And if you don't get it, it's a very long three minutes. One of the favourites, and we have absolutely no idea why.

The automatic qualifiers:

"Voilà" Barbara Pravi for France Télévisions ("France") The one with the spotlight. Earnest, powerful, and memorable.

"Embers" James Newman for BBC ("United Kingdom") The one with the trumpets. "They'll need the greatest stage show in history", we said in March. But the stage show is Wham! minus the charismatic lead singer, plus some trumpets.

"Voy a Quedarme" Blas Cantó for RTVE ("Spain") The one with the moon. Pleasant, inoffensive, fear we're going to forget this.

What else happened

Duncan Laurence opened Tuesday's show with his latest single. Chantal filled admirably when a camera fault prevented the RTÉ performance from starting on time: plug the Eurovision app, hear the audience cheer, and then count in the performance.

In the first commercial break, Nikkie de Jager showed off some viewer videos, and chatted to this year's contestants. Edsilia had a word with The Roop: "on fire", where they explained their finger dance. Nikkie brought up the line to Sydney and Montaigne's party. That's except for viewers to BBC II! on BBC4, who had to sit through Scott Mills, Chelsee Grimes, and substitute host Sara Cox chatting with Senhit.

In the second commercial break: Chantal had a video chat with Måns Zelmerlöw, bringing back memories of "Heroes" for the zillionth time. "How does it feel to be on a Eurovision stage again?" Back? He's hardly left! That's except for viewers on BBC4, who were given a chat with Dadi Freyr.

"The Power of Water" was the main interval act, a mixture of dance, video, and singing by Davina Michelle. (Who? Young singer from Idols, great alto voice. She'll be called for the main contest sooner rather than later.) There was also a retrospective of some great Eurovision winners – Katrina (of the Waves), Anne-Marie David (the one famous person from Luxembourg), Eimear Quinn (the wife of EBU boss Noel Whelan), and Johnny Logan (wig on).

BBC4 had a Line of Duty spoof, as unfunny as that sounds. They also dug out Cheryl Baker from the Eggs and Baker set, she has some quite unreasonable expectations of James Newman.

The world feed got a look at the non-winners through history, some actually funny stuff from Nikkie. Edsilia presents a Platinum Disc to Duncan Laurence for één milliard streams of his Billboard Hot 100 hit "Arcade". No Eurovision song's made the Billboard list since "Ooh ah just a little bit" in 1997.

Similar stuff on Thursday, when the opening and interval acts both took the theme of dance. Nicole and Ruslana guested on the history bit, and we learned that Natalia is translating between Greek and Nederlands like a language-learning machine.

And, lest we forget, this year's Eurovision Song Contest is by royal appointment. Máxima Zorreguieta, the wife of Willem Alexander van Oranje, visited the studios and pledged fealty to Queen Nikkie.

The final running order

Expect the usual load of faffing around at the start, but they'll be singing by 8.15 so don't be late. "El diablo" will begin the contest with the mirror devils, then "Karma" the Balkan ballad. High notes from "Set me free", and chill from "The wrong place".

Songs 5 and 6 are strong women, "Russian woman" and "Je me casse" go head-to-head, inviting comparisons – we think it'll favour Destiny. We'll honour the Terry Wogan Memorial Drinks Interval next, never drink before song seven. Slow grower "Love is on my side" comes next, followed by "Loco loco"'s rattling. A commercial break (Nikkie and Valentina!) comes before "Embers" in position 9.

"Last dance" has green screen effects, then "Tout l'univers" is used to separate some upbeat songs. "10 years" brings Daði back in position 12, with "Voy a quedarme" and "Sugar" and "I don't feel hate" giving a half-way pause. The rock of "Dark side" comes next, before a commercial break (Edsilia with the commentators).

"Growing up is getting old" is in position 17, feels quite dangerous there. "Discotheque" may get buried, as it's followed by "Shum" and "Voilà" – these two songs speed up as they go on, leaving us quite breathless going into "Mata Hari".

"Fallen angel" continues the off-screen showmance between Tix and Efendi (feels as one-sided as Ollie and Sara, challenge fans). "Birth of a new age" is the hometown entry, risking being swamped by "Zitti e buoni" and its glam rock. "Voices" is filler before the Big American Guest Star, "Adrenalina". Trust us, he's better than Madonna. So was Tornike Kipiani.

Phone lines open at about 10.05, for about 45 minutes. Interval acts: Afrojack and Glennis Grace, Nikkie and Angela Rippon, Edsilia's Karaoke In A Car, fans, the rooftop concert, pre-recorded Duncan Laurence, and a human countdown. The televote scores are revealed going up the board, so we won't be told who the televote winner is. Scheduled end time is 11.50, we reckon there's a 15-minute overrun.

In other news

Zoe Ball has decided to step down as host of Strictly Come Dancing It Takes Two. It's nine years since Zoe took the reins of the daily companion show, a remarkable run.

Great news for all viewers! Mark Labbett has signed up for The Chase Us, which airs on ABC (Disney). He'll join a rotation consisting of Jeopardy! legends James Holzhauer, Ken Jennings, and Brad Rutter, under host Sara Haines. We'll see if we can find an episode to review later in the year.

It's the Eurovision Song Contest finals (RTE1, BBC1, bvn.tv, ruv.is, and many many more, Sat). You might know that already.

There's a Great Photography Challenge (BBC4, Mon; repeated BBC2 Sat), and Bake Off The Professionals (C4, Tue). The end of an era as Barker, Tuffers, and Dawson leave A Question of Sport (BBC1, Fri).

Next Saturday's got Celebrity Catchphrase, the return of The Wall, the other Celebrity Beat the Chasers, and the first edition of The Masked Dancer (ITV).

EBU copyrights require us to give credits for each photo:
† - EBU/Thomas Hanses
‡ - EBU/Andres Putting
♠ - EBU/Jess Gleeson
◊ - from tx EBU/NOS/NPO/AVROTROS
♣ - ProSieben.

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