The Internationalist Eurovision Blog

It's late November. We know who's headed where for the Melodifestivalen Semis, Latvia have done their strange annual thing of releasing the songs for Supernova without actually releasing the songs for Supernova, Armenia have announced the first confirmed artist for Tel Aviv in their singer Srbuk, Estonia have whilst I'm writing this article released the songs for Eesti Laul (https://wiwibloggs.com/2018/12/01/estonia-competing-songs-music-videos-eesti-laul-2019/229271/) and despite my in-depth guide to different formats to pick an artist (http://internationalisteurovisionblog.blogspot.com/2018/10/is-there-best-method-of-selecting-artist.html) - the Brits have chosen the "Whatever the Germans used to do" option with six artists singing one of three songs. So Eurovision Season 2019 is now right around the corner and this will be the last of my summer season posts designed to get all of us considering different parts of the Eurovision experience. In the last of my p...

November means one thing in Eurovision world. By this point, we already know where we're headed to next year, we haven't quite started listening to songs for national finals and for many Eurovision fans, there is only one thing to get excited about... Junior Eurovision. Now I must admit, I have never dabbled in Junior Eurovision for many reasons. I believed that it was a weird project to run Eurovision with a group of children, I couldn't see how it had any benefits and whilst the songs I had listened to were alright, there was nothing that I got desperately hooked on. However as Minsk prepares to host the biggest Junior Eurovision to date, I decided that if I wanted to write a blog post about it - I had to have first seen one in full flow! So, after sampling the songs on offer this year to get a taste of what I was in for, I went to YouTube and watched the entirety of last year's Junior Eurovision Song Contest in Tblisi and this is what I have to say. Pressure on You...

Hello all! I've got to be honest, I had done all the research on Tel Aviv to be able to finally sit down and write up my guide to the city. However, I realised that without the defined locations of EuroClub and the EuroVillage, the guide was somewhat useless to those of you who will be making the trip out to Israel. So scanning down the list of Eurovision news and picking out that it was all based around artist selection for 2019, I thought I would bring the conversation forum here. Is there a best way of selecting an artist? Some countries change it annually whilst others stick with a proven formula that works (some Scandanavian countries come to mind). Anyway, let's take a look at the different formats of selecting an artist and see what success they have brought. Internal Selection If you're a national broadcaster and you know that you're onto a winner, why ruin a good thing by throwing it to the public as part of the selection process? Not to mention, why waste ...

Today, I am going to write the first in what I hope will be a series of articles written by fans about their live Eurovision experiences starting with my only time at Eurovision at the Stockholm 2016 contest. I had been a Eurovision fan since 2012 when during my first time watching Eurovision, I cheered on Jedward to an underwhelming placing in Baku whilst Loreen romped to victory. I knew from that moment that I was desperate to attend my first ever Eurovision Song Contest before too long. So when I finally managed to secure a ticket for the Grand Final at the Globen in Stockholm, I was over the moon. I booked my plane tickets and I was ready to go. When the day of my flight finally came around in May of that year on the day before the final, I was giddy with excitement. It had been a national final process of many ups and downs (especially for those who remember that this was the year of Margaret and 'Cool Me Down') but I was ready to cheer on Barei and '...

Hello everybody! I am only just coming back down to earth after a sensational World Cup victory for France ten days ago. In celebration of a moment that has sent the Western European country into total pandemonium, I am sharing with all of you my top 10 French entries. This is a slightly more difficult choice to make than my Israeli top 10 a few weeks ago (http://internationalisteurovisionblog.blogspot.com/2018/06/israel-top-ten.html) because the reality is that there are far more entries to choose from. France was one of the original Eurovision countries and there are a whopping 61 entries to sift through in picking out the top 10. I am proud to say that the French top 10 covers almost every decade of Eurovision history and is a nice indicator of France as a country and what its music has told us over time. 10. 'Tom Pillibi' by Jacqueline Boyer (1960) Perhaps appropriately, we begin in 1960 with France's second victory in the first contest to be held on British soil. T...

Hello all! I apologise for not making posts more regularly, you see I've been following the World Cup! When I'm not being a Eurovision enthusiast, I am a West Ham United supporter and I enjoy spending many a weekend travelling up and down the country to watch football matches. We are now down to the Semi-Finals of the World Cup and after losing Brazil and Uruguay in the Quarter Finals, we have now come to an all European last four! With this being the case, I saw a perfect opportunity to unite my two loves and find a way to pique the interest of football fans in Eurovision and Eurovision in football fans. This is the World Cup Semi Finals 2018 Preview (Eurovision style): So for this preview, I have selected three Eurovision editions in which the two countries in question finished close to each other and I ask you to judge which of these songs you prefer and let me know your opinion by voting in the comments below. France vs. Belgium 1978 The last time that France hosted...

Hello everybody! So with Israel looking like they're going to go with Tel Aviv and with the Israeli government agreeing to not play any part in the organisation of the song contest, it's looking like we can all finally get excited about a trip to Israel next May. For now, us in the Eurovision fandom have to find ways of continuing to reflect on the contest. I recently contributed to a Facebook feed around the question "Is Eurovision a gay event?" whilst also finding some new Eurovision songs to get me through the summer and having travelled to Portugal to attend a friend's wedding, made a pilgrimage to the Altice Arena to soak up the Eurovision atmosphere four weeks after the contest had finished (long story short, it was like it was never there). For me, the time has come to take in the songs I liked from this year's contest and input them plus some other new favourites into my overall rankings. Now for those of you who haven't been following along with...