Tuesday 8 May 2018

Eurovision 2018 - Semi final 1 predictions

Semi Final 1, taking place on the 8th of May, has been deemed 'the semi final of death' and 'the bloodbath' by fans and Eurovision press. Why? Well, this semi features the majority of the heavy hitters of this year's contest (such as Israel, Estonia, Bulgaria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Finland and Cyprus), as well some of the strongest vocalists (Croatia, Albania, Armenia, Austria). There are also dark horses like Lithuania, Switzerland and Belarus that threaten to qualify also. Oh, and there are only 10 spots in the final up for grabs...see the issue?

I've been following Eurovision for years, and this is easily the strongest semi final line-up I've seen since the dual semi final format was introduced ten years ago. There are BOUND to be casualties, and I'm fearing for every single one of my faves at this point. I initially felt pretty good about the predictions I made a few months back...and then the rehearsals came along and threw everything up into the air with a few major surprises and disappointments.

As such a devout fan, I struggle to put my personal biases aside in order to critically determine what songs will score well with juries and televoters respectively. Therefore, I will be listing my 10 personal picks to go through and my top 10 predictions separately.

Who I THOUGHT would go through (pre-rehursals)

1. Israel - Netta - "Toy"
2. Czech Republic - Mikolas Josef - "Lie To Me"
3. Estonia - Elina Nechayeva - "La Forza"
4. Cyprus - Eleni Foureira - "Fuego"
5. Austria - Cesár Sampson - "Nobody but You"
6. Belgium - SENNEK - "A Matter of Time"
7. Bulgaria - EQUINOX - "Bones"
8. Greece - Yianna Terzi - "Oneiro Mou"
9. Armenia - Sevak Khanagyan - "Qami"
10. Finland - Saara Aalto - "Monsters"

Who I THINK will go through (post-rehursals)

1. Israel - Netta - "Toy"
2. Czech Republic - Mikolas Josef - "Lie To Me"
3. Estonia - Elina Nechayeva - "La Forza"
4. Cyprus - Eleni Foureira - "Fuego"
5. Austria - Cesár Sampson - "Nobody but You"
6. Bulgaria - EQUINOX - "Bones"
7. Finland - Saara Aalto - "Monsters"
8. Lithuania - Ieva Zasimauskaitė - "When We're Old"
9. Albania - Eugent Bushpepa - "Mall"
10. Greece - Yianna Terzi - "Oneiro Mou" or Belgium - SENNEK - "A Matter of Time"

Who I WANT to go through

1. Israel - Netta - "Toy"
2. Estonia - Elina Nechayeva - "La Forza"
3. Cyprus - Eleni Foureira - "Fuego"
4. Austria - Cesár Sampson - "Nobody but You"
5. Belgium - SENNEK - "A Matter of Time"
6. Bulgaria - EQUINOX - "Bones"
7. Greece - Yianna Terzi - "Oneiro Mou"
8. Azerbaijan - Aisel - "X My Heart"
9. FYR Macedonia - Eye Que - "Lost And Found"
10. Croatia - Franka - "Crazy"

Now I'm not saying my predictions are 100% correct...but...last year I predicted 8/10 of the qualifiers from semi 1 and 9/10 of the qualifying acts for semi 2, so I have form for accuracy. I feel like semi 2 will be FAR easier to predict, as I'll discover later on this week...

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