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Eurovision 2025 Semi Final 2
Introduction
This time I have Pringles and creamy Irish cheddar, and a cookie dough milkshake. Now it's time to watch a guy carrying a glowing heart with a white plus inside - it's the Swiss flag.
Good grief, all those people all on top of each other, it's as if Covid was never a thing. That's quite a stage, too, isn't it?
What is Cara Delavigne wearing this time? It's almost as if she's ever so slightly out of focus, maybe phasing slightly into traditional Eurovision of the seventies.
Right, after a shorter six minutes, let's go for the second semi-final to whittle sixteen songs down to ten.
 Getting ready to watch this contest.
1. Australia "Milkshake Man" (Go-Jo)
I'm actually speechless. I can't help but think that this is one giant euphemism. And clearly a crowd pleaser because it's so over the top.
2. Montenegro "Dobrodošli" (Nina Žižić)
Well that's a moody opening for the woman wrapped in a big duvet dress. The staging of this is visually impressive, and it's in the mould of "somebody from the former Yugoslavia is going to go full on dramatic", this is it. Nice song, so idea what it's about.
3. Ireland "Laika Party" (Emmy)
Emmy from Norway is singing for Ireland about the Soviet dog that went into space before people. Interesting, her vocals make her sound like a ten year old. Sadly the real-life Laika died of hypothermia a few hours into orbit and this was assured as the technology to pull off reentry hadn't been invented, so a dog was sent on a one-way trip. Emmy, however, has chosen to reinterpret the dog's demise to have Laika having a party in the sky. It's very... Eurovision.
What a crazy intro. Was that scripted or just thrown in for the sake of it?
4. Latvia "Bur man laimi" (Tautumeitas)
This is completely different. I can see this as an opening theme to some sort of cyberpunk animé. I know this is supposed to be in Latvian, but it sounds like they're saying "never mind, he's six foot deep". That's something different, arty as hell.
5. Armenia "Survivor" (PARG)
Sort of not-quite rap belted out by a guy who is too cool to wear any clothing on the upper half. Funny how if a woman tried that the world would end. After a quiet bit, going for maximum climax points, only slightly marred by some really questionable lyrics. Still, he gave this everything.
6. Austria "Wasted Love" (JJ)
Is that a guy? He's singing up around a G5... and now going full opera for... something dramatic that hits a B5 and then seems like it is almost about to bust into symphonic rock. Give some credit, that was a hell of a difficult song to sing.
Now the blonde Cara-alike (Hazel?) is doing some presentation while being carried across the audience, like crowd surfing style. This is mad. Yes, we're wasting time watching the presenter do some incredibly bad dancing.
*. United Kingdom "What The Hell Just Happened?" (Remember Monday)
Remember Monday? Ugh, I don't like Mondays. These three are cute. Colour-coded too. This song is strange, it's as if it's not sure what genre it wants to be, and keeps changing rhythm every twenty seconds, and it seems like the only time that it comes together is when they're all harmonising, which they do very well. Come on girls, keep it together. ☺
7. Greece "Asteromata" (Klavdia)
With big glasses (Nana Mouskouri, anyone?), a dramatic Greek song with the woman standing on a rock with a burning tree in the background, and now lots of flying doves, and then rough seas. I'm not it is necessary to understand Greek to get an idea what this is about - refugees, right?
8. Lithuania "Tavo akys" (Katarsis)
This is an alt-rock song performed by a bloke who is seriously channelling the shoegaze vibes. Oh, finally he is walking, whilst yelling the same word over and over.
9. Malta "Serving" (Miriana Conte)
You can thank the BBC for this song saying "Serving aahhh". It was supposed to be "Serving kant", where kant is a Maltese word meaning singing. Maybe somebody at the Beeb choked on their tea mishearing "serving kant" for something else? That being said, so much stuff in this song pushes boundaries if you happen to have a dirty mind, like Conte bouncing on that big exercise ball... of course it would be the Brits that complained. ☺
10. Georgia "Freedom" (Mariam Shengelia)
Standing in a big white dress on an angular rock thing, she's belting out the song while letting her personal ninjas do the heavy lifting. Now she sheds the dress for a trouser suit in red and white (the colours of Georgia's flag). You know, this sounds like a Bond theme.
"belting out the song while letting her personal ninjas do the heavy lifting", only with Eurovision would a sentence like that make sense.
Now the dark-haired one (Sandra?) is talking to various commentators.
*. France "Maman" (Louane)
She's apparently a massive star in France. I've heard the name Louane, but I'm not overly familiar with French music as I live in a black spot (zone blanche in French!) so I listen to symphonic metal/rock on streaming radio and/or British TV and/or Netflix.
That's a lot of sand. Take a moment to think of the stage helpers cleaning up that mess. She's singing about her mummy. Oh good god, the sand stuff is going everywhere, I mean it's pouring on her like rain.
Okay, I get it, she's really attached to her mother. I know the feeling, I liked my mom too. But, jeez, fifty seconds to clean the stage.
And just to send it up (and possibly give them longer to clean the stage) the two hosts are pretending to clean up sand from the stage using backpack mounted Karcher vacuum cleaners. Work was thinking of getting one for me, but I was worried about the battery life, so they got me the normal plug-in kind. Boy does it suck. And it's only about 800W or so, but could strip the lino right off the floor if you wanted.
11. Denmark "Hallucination" (Sissal)
This sounds very EDM, and is heavy on the blue. Actually, you know, I haven't noticed every other song being bright red like the first semi-final. That was quite a performance, I would imagine that would pass.
12. Czechia "Kiss Kiss Goodbye" (Adonxs)
I was trying to work out who this reminded me of, but just for thirty seconds we go - yes - bright red and change pace entirely. And, you know what, this is - to me - what would have happened if Prince did a Xandria song...and I'd imagine that very few of you would know what I mean by that. ☺
13. Luxembourg "La poupée monte le son" (Laura Thorn)
Interesting opening, doing that with an overhead camera. Damn, this is earwormy isn't it? Nice staging for the concept of what the song is about, and even comes with a costume change.
14. Israel "New Day Will Rise" (Yuval Raphael)
The first part was in English, and now we're into French. She's quite a powerful singer, and the audience is suspiciously quiet. I have no idea what she's was singing there, so I'm guessing that part was in Hebrew. The staging is a sort of dangly-diamond-like staircase thing.
*. Germany "Baller" (Abor & Tynna)
Austrians representing Germany. Hmmm. The brother, looking like a young Spock, plays an electronic cello while the sister does the vocals for this electro song.
15. Serbia "Mila" (Princ)
A power ballad including long held vowels and dragging the performer down the length of the stage. He can sing, that bloke.
16. Finland "Ich komme" (Erika Vikman)
Is Erika trying to do Battle Beast? Not quite hard enough, this is more eurodance with a hard 4:4 beat, but it's a rowdy way to finish the contest. Wait, she's yelling while standing on a giant golden mic stand suspended in the air? Only in Eurovision, right? She threw everything at this song.
My picks
These are written in a random order.
- Ireland - spoiler: the dog didn't die
- Luxembourg - the singing doll
- Finland - everything and the kitchen sink
- Georgia - the Bond theme
- Latvia - the dude is six foot deep
- Greece - drama for refugees
- Serbia - love hurts
- Israel - the glittery stairs
- Denmark - hallucination in blue
- Austria - operatic boats
While they're talking about the voting and doing a recap, I want to say that in the past I have noted that there have been more than one time when we've had the semi finals split into "meh songs" and "bangers". This was very clearly a better night than Tuesday, and it seemed really obvious this year that they seemed to want to put the better songs together. I thought it was supposed to be a random selection?
About Switzerland
A dance about time and Switzerland and Swiss precision. That might have been better if the previous broadcast hadn't run over.
Behind the scenes of the postcards
To take some more time.
Did I see a rainbow flag? I hope so. I heard that these were not permitted in the contest, which would have been utterly dumb considering who is the major fan demographic. I can understand that there might be "issues" around certain flags, but banning them is not a solution. People are waving flags to send a message, support, solidarity, and maybe just for acceptance.
Hey - big Palestine flag too. Thumb up.
Lost Eurovision acts
Allowing some of the performers who couldn't perform in 2020 a stage to perform, at long last. Well done Switzerland for giving them a place to perform.
His arms are on fire? No wonder he's screaming... It's not full versions of the songs, I think they have been edited down to about two minutes, but never mind, it's performing at a real Eurovision. And since they aren't proper entries, they don't need to pay any attention to the six-on-stage rule, bringing numerous dancers with each song.
That was nice.
The results
Here is who is going through, presented in a random order.
- Lithuania - the shoegaze.
- Israel - the glittery stairs.
- Armenia - the running hunk.
- Denmark - the blue hallucination.
- Austria - those high notes.
- Luxembourg - whooo, it's the doll.
- Finland - the giant gold mic stand.
- Latvia - the ethereal girls.
- Malta - the kant.
- Greece - Nana.
The BBC announcers are in shock that there's no Serbia, no Ireland, no Australia... but the thing is that with Tuesday's contest I had to listen to the recap to bump eight songs up to ten while this time I actually had eleven songs but I had to drop one - I dropped Malta. It wasn't really my thing but I figured it was going to qualify. Much better songs this time. So who will it be winning the contest? Let's just throw a name out there: Luxembourg.
Okay then, way past my bedtime so I'm going to drop this on the server and hope that the HTML markup isn't a mess.
Same time same place in forty five and a half hours for the huge massive neverending Grand Final.
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