I suppose that time has passed for Bulgaria's representatives in Lisbon but the memory of their performance at the
London Eurovision Party will never fade for me. The equinox I talk of in this post's title? This one...
We are now closer to
Tel Aviv 2019 than midnight on May 12th 2018, as I left the Altice Arena after the pinnacle of my Eurovision life (to date). It is all downhill (in the nicest sense of the word) from now on - the news will start snowballing as we find out all those artists and songs, eventually! As far as the hosts are concerned, we know some more snippets and possible plans for next May:
If Tel Aviv runs out of hotels and the 'ship off the coast' idea doesn't happen, you may be able to camp here in between visits to the Eurovision venue in May. Tel Aviv's largest park,
HaYarkon Park, might have an area designated for fans to stay at, with tents and caravans available. It sounds as though the local authorities are being creative with what they may have to put in place in May - I suppose it is no different to thousands of tents at Glastonbury and at least you can guarantee that you'll need sunscreen rather than a raincoat! As for more internal matters, auditions for the host's positions in May have taken place, with those who won't be there being more notable than those that are. For a start,
Shiri Maimon and
Rotem Sela (below), both now involved with the new series of
HaKokhav HaBa L'Eurovision 2019 as judge and host, will not be amongst them:
They will still have a major part to play in providing the next
Israeli entry that will defend their crown in Tel Aviv. The other matter that MIGHT happen soon is tickets for Eurovision going on sale (including Green Room ones, in a separate hall, remember?), if the KAN original tender process is to be believed, although
Jon Ola Sand indicated in a press conference at JESC that the first wave is likely to be in the New Year. Having been blessed with a reasonable draw in the
OGAE UK ballot for packages this year (37th pair), hopefully I'll have my tickets sorted beforehand...
One matter that has (sadly) been officially confirmed is that
Lithuania's "
Eurovision After Party" is not going ahead now on December 16th. The event that was due to be held in Kaunas and hosted by
Ieva Zaismauskaite, with performances by
Laura Rizzotto,
Elina Nechayeva,
Cesár Sampson and
Ryan O’Shaughnessy, had to be cancelled due to budget concerns and low ticket sales. A real shame as it sounded a great idea and it had some of my favourite artists from this year attending...
Estonia announced last week who would be participating in
Eesti Laul 2019 and there are quite a few returnees this time.
Grete Paia has tried out at her nation's selection process a couple of times now and she will be joined by three female vocalists who have made it to Eurovision in the past -
Sandra Nurmsalu (Urban Symphony, 2009), and
Tanja (2014) and
Birgit (2013) who together are part of the group
The Swingers. Other previous Eesti Laul performers include
Kristel Aaslaid (2016 with Cartoon),
Victor Crone (MF 2015) and
Stefan (half of Vajé, 2018) - December 1st is when we get to hear the songs...
Even though the process brought their first ever Final DNQ this year in Lisbon, iTV in
Azerbaijan are going internal again for 2019 and they have held the initial audition rounds last week. Will this give that nation a better result? Perhaps giving a talented jazz singer something of that genre to sing might have helped this year...
Another internal selection that is taking place and had a lot more success in Lisbon will announce its decision next month.
Austria obviously did amazingly well with "Nobody But You" in Lisbon and have hinted that their entry for Tel Aviv will be either 'a highly charged ballad or a dynamic pop duo number'. Sounds as though it will be a lot different to those silky tones of the singer who was at the London Eurovision Party this year...
It must be nice to have already have suitors for your services -
Tamta has confirmed that her management has been approached by Cypriot broadcaster RIK as to whether she would be the
Cyprus representative in Tel Aviv. She has always maintained that if the song was right, she'd be happy to perform for either Cyprus, Greece or Georgia (where she grew up).
Greek broadcaster ERT have literally only just started to think about Eurovision 2019, according to an official statement from them to quell rumours of meetings already held with two singers, one of which was meant to be Tamta.
As I mentioned earlier,
Israel have started their selection process last night (Saturday 24th) with
HaKokhav HaBa L’Eurovision 2019. No vocal loopers appeared but there were six artists shown who got at least 82% to easily 'lift that 70% wall'! It will not just be the artist selected this year but also the song for Tel Aviv - for me, the best of the qualifiers on show one was this lady:
Daniel Mazuz, one of Netta's backing singers in Lisbon, brought her own take on Pharrell Williams' classic song "Happy" and that made her stand out a mile - let's hope she can do the same with other material at the next stage. It is a very enjoyable process to watch and listen too -
HaKokhav HaBa will also get you in the mood for May! This will fill in the gap until the end of the year nicely, unless we get more artists announcing that they are entering songs into their national selection processes, like
András Kállay Saunders has:
The Middletonz are
Kállay Saunders and
Slashkovic, an Iranian-Dutch rapper, and "Roses" is their debut release, a three minute version of which has been entered into
Hungary's NF, A Dal. Rap and EDM will be appreciated there more than most NFs across Eurovision - perhaps this will be another journey for Saunders like 2014, rather than missing out in 2016 and 2017...
Just for completeness, the
JESC was won by Poland.
Roksana Węgiel sung "Anyone I Want To Be" and finished with 215 points, 12 points clear of second placed France.
Kazakhstan in their debut Eurovision Contest of any sort were placed a creditable 6th - could that be the start of the Eurovision ball rolling for them? Jon Ola Sand indicated that their participation in the 'senior' Contest would be discussed by the EBU Reference Group but that being part of 2019 was not a possibility. He also liked how
Belarus had staged the JESC and felt that they were ready to host Eurovision itself - all they need to do now is win...
There was some delightful news that came from the
Swiss broadcaster SRF on Twitter a few days ago:
In translation?
CoCo from
Zibbz is expecting a baby about April! She wants a girl, Hubby Yves wants a boy and
Stee knows he'll be an uncle whatever - a huge congratulations to them all and a lovely way to end what has been an exciting year for the group.
Yep, it's almost December so that means voting for your top ten to go into the mix for the
Eurovision Top 250 that will be broadcast on New Years Eve. I've written a post about my choices for the last five years and this year won't be any different - how will I decide who to pick this year? You'll find out what I did on New Year's Day! You've got until 12pm CET on December 3rd -
here's the link.
On a personal level, on November 14th I participated in something that I, a Eurovision blogger and radio show host, had never done before - I appeared on a
vodcast:
