The Internationalist Eurovision Blog

And then there were four! One of England, the United States, the Netherlands or Sweden will soon be champions of the biggest football tournament this summer! And of course, we have been waiting and ready to go with the best three Eurovision picks from each nation. Put your favourites in the comments below and feel free to vote along! England vs. USA 1975 By the time the Shadows took to the stage in Stockholm, the United Kingdom had been waiting since 1967 for their first outright victory (discounting that fiasco in Madrid). The BBC's consequent decision to internally select The Shadows was not met with much popularity. In fact, 'Let Me Be the One' tallied the lowest published winning score for a British act in national selection history. Despite this, they ended up bucking the public perceptions to come second in Stockholm behind Teach-in's Dutch classic. Wess and Dori fly the Stars and Stripes again in Stockholm with their own brand of southern Mediterranean sult...

Following a somewhat successful reading of the World Cup through Eurovision eyes last year (https://internationalisteurovisionblog.blogspot.com/2018/07/world-cup-semi-finals-2018-eurovision.html), we are back to do it all again with the Women's World Cup. Amazingly, we can start unusually early with this tournament as 7 of the 8 competing nations in this year's quarter finals are European and the last is the United States of America. Fortunately for us, there have been many American participants over the course of time and they will be flying the stars and stripes in our mini competition. Please vote for your favourite by writing it in the comments section below and we will post the results along with the next round of matches when the Semi Final line-up is revealed. So without further ado, here are the Women's World Cup 2019 Quarter Finals... Eurovision style! Norway vs. England 1985 We start in the Scandinavium in the year that the Norwegian curse was finally lifted...

Another year gone and another opportunity to reflect on a year of Eurovision history and heritage. As regular readers will know, I maintain two separate rankings of all nations at Eurovision. The first is a points ranking in which I give countries 2 points for a song I love and 1 for a song I like. The second is a proportional ranking which takes into account the number of times that each country has participated at the contest. With that in mind, let's have a look at this year's update starting with the state of play pre-update. Point Rankings (only showcasing countries with 5 or more points): 1. United Kingdom-22,  2. Sweden-18, 3. Ireland-15, 4. France-14,  5. Estonia-13,  6. Greece-13,  7. Norway-11,  8. Germany-11,  9. Malta-10,  10. Italy-10,   11. Denmark-10, 12. Switzerland-10,  13. Spain-9, 14. Netherlands-9, 15. Iceland-9, 16. Romania-8, 17. Russia-7, ...

Feel that? It's the gentle breeze of summer coming through. We have made it through another year of Eurovision and it's time for that beautiful reflection period that allows us to have a breath, take stock and begin looking forward to doing it all again in a few months time. This year brings some added excitement since a full-scale bidding war is now breaking out in the Netherlands and even though Rotterdam is the favourite, I definitely wouldn't say it's a done deal by any stretch of the imagination. So as the many Dutch cities fight it out for the chance to host the 2020 contest, let's take this opportunity to celebrate Dutch heritage within Eurovision history. This is my list of the top ten Dutch Eurovision entries of all time and I think it's a list that will surprise many. 10) 'Amsterdam' by Maggie MacNeal (1980) Perhaps it is apt that we kick off this top 10 with a celebration of the Dutch capital sung as the home entry during the last contest ...

Right, having gotten my previous rant out of the way, I now feel in a calm enough state to discuss when 2019 brought in terms of perspective to the Eurovision Song Contest. What has edition 64 brought us to inform edition 65 and beyond? We should begin considering a hosting threshold Now, I'll admit that our quartet this year were better than the Lisbon hosts but that was a really low bar to traverse over. I know that it's a good opportunity to showcase local presenting talent but it is still the biggest TV show in the world and we should remember that the scripting of these shows are done by people who don't necessarily all have an amazing grasp of English. I know that the video during 2017 of Mans training the Ukrainian hosts was comedic but I actually believe that maybe the EBU offering the potential hosts and scriptwriters a crash course on how to do Eurovision whilst keeping the cultural sense of humour that makes each year's hosting distinctive would be very b...

Upon reaching the end of the four-hour spectacle that was Eurovision 2019, I felt disappointed. What's more, this disappointment wasn't a disappointment of anger or frustration, it was a disappointment of utter emptiness, a feeling I can only describe as similar to when my team (West Ham United) lose to an inferior team, a sense of 'well how could you expect anything else'. So we are headed to The Netherlands next year and that fact in itself brings much excitement that we will explore over the summer on this blog but for now, I want to take a second to reflect on Eurovision 2019 and what has in my opinion been the worst Eurovision Song Contest I have experienced since first watching the contest live in 2012. Before I start this post, let me clear some things up. This is not a news or a fact-based post, this is me expressing my personal opinion as a Eurovision fan in reaction to what I witnessed on Saturday night. I am not asking people who read this post to agree...