The Internationalist Eurovision Blog

There's an update post coming soon but I am hoping to know the identity of some of the entries (cough, cough France, Spain & Switzerland) before getting into the meat and potatoes of some of the other exciting national finals going down. With that in mind, I thought I would take this opportunity to explore one of my personal favourite elements of the contest... the stage. Now, if you're not a die-hard Eurovision fan, you will probably have stopped reading by this point, but if you haven't, let me give you an opportunity to sway you on why this is so fascinating. Stages are in many ways representative of the identity of the contest, often they will be the biggest statement of the host country as to how they want their culture presented on an international scale. My personal favourite in this respect is the 1992 stage from Malmo where the stage was literally backed by a massive Viking ship motif (pictured below). (Eurovision 1992 Stage) In more modern times, this s...

Happy New Year to all and with 2018 speeding into our lives, the new Eurovision season gets properly into full swing and us die-hard fans get our teeth stuck into the various entries from around Europe. There have been some highlights and low points of early days of the race to be the Eurovision winner (listening to all 60 of the Romanian entries was tedious to say the least). Nonetheless, it is good to be back in the world where we have songs coming out from all around Europe every day! Let's take a look at the national races in play for January and Early February. France Barring Cyprus announcing their song before France's national final on January 27th, the next song to be officially confirmed for Eurovision will be French! As a Brit and therefore a citizen of a big five nation, it is downright refreshing to see a country like France begin to strategise a path towards winning Eurovision and having much success in the process. It says a lot that last year's entry whic...

A Merry late Christmas to all readers! If you do happen to be digesting this, you are probably not particularly one for the festive season of fun and frivolity and all I can say is "you're not alone". What I can excite you about however is that on December 23rd 2017 in Tirana, Albania, a jury decided that the winner of Albania's Festivali i Kenges 56 would be Eugent Bushpepa and 'Mall' ('Yearning' in Albanian). For all those who haven't listened to the song, I have included the youtube link below and it's definitely worth a listen. Now, everybody will have their own impressions and opinions on the song, so I am just going to start with some facts that put this song as one of the recent stand-out Albanian entries. 1) It's not a power ballad sung by a woman giving everything she has to a song that was initially written in Albanian and then translated (awkwardly into English). I am not alone in viewing the mess that was both 2016's ...

I was planning to write a piece on the United Kingdom and Eurovision. However, that was before the gift came into our lives that is the official announcements of the Melodifestivalen 2018 artists. For anybody who isn't a Eurovision super fan or a Swede, Melodifestivalen is the Swedish national final that decides the Swedish Eurovision act each year. When I first started getting into national finals, I was very hesitant about drinking the cool-ade on the contest, but have ended up giving into how bonkers, brilliant and infectious the Melodifestivalen bug is. The contest is six shows (4 semi finals, a "second chance" round known as "andra chansen" and a grand final). The shows take place in different arenas around the country with the final always taking place in Stockholm. The acts chosen are a combination of comedy, folk, schlager, pop, rock and many others whilst the production values are one step off the production values of the actual Eurovision finals. I hav...

Hello! So yesterday I went down my all-time Eurovision rankings done both ways and with that in mind, I am going to start looking ahead to the 2018 contest by looking at the countries who are due a win and why I believe they're due a win. Russia I'm sure I'm not the only Eurovision fan who struggles to "believe" that of all the Eurovision hits that Russia have given us that their only win has come from Dima Bilan's 2008 hit (let's see if anybody gets that joke). In seriousness, Russia have placed excellently in the previous rounds in 2016 with Sergey Lazarev and 2015 with Polina Gagarina. It seems to all of us that they are ramping up their efforts more and more and we can't be that far off a second Russian win and a return to Moscow (or as my guess would be a trip to Sochi). They are further boosted this year by their absence last year (which seems like a ridiculous argument until you realise that Ukraine didn't compete in 2015 and Portugal di...

Hello Europe or hello world or hello United Kingdom or to be more realistic, hello friends and family of me, Fin Ross Russell. If you have been invited to delve into the depths of this blog and all that it contains, then I have probably trusted you with my worst kept secret. I am a massive Eurovision fan! How massive? Well, to the extent that I have a) flown to the 2016 contest in Stockholm and watched the grand final live in the Globen off UK student loan money, b) watched back every contest since it was started and c) made the decision to be one of those guys who sets up ANOTHER Eurovision blog! So why a blog? why now? For one, I have actually been surprised at the amount of media on Eurovision which I feel suitably reflects who I am and what I stand for as a Eurovision fan. At present, I consume the majority of my Eurovision news from Wiwiblogs and ESC Insight (which are both fantastic and informative websites). However, I feel that so often, two incredibly vital and important thi...