[LMBTO] My Eurovision Moments of 2016...

Isn't that Anouk, I hear you all cry?  Aren't you three years too late as having her as one of your Eurovision moments?  Not when she was one of the main voices proposing this year's Dutch entrant to enter nor when she was criticizing the 2015 artist Trijntje Oosterhuis and her choice of outfit, with Amsterdam Today running with the following headline on 25th September last year:


Yep, that last word does mean the same in English!  That was my first Moment of this Eurovision season, coinciding with Douwe Bob's reveal as The Netherland's internal choice (a pretty decent one, truth be told).

Now this is my third 'My Eurovision Moments' (2014 and 2015 for your perusal, if you are that interested) and I really enjoy looking back over my posts over the season just passed, picking out what stood out for me, some items in a comical way, some in a OMG sort of way.  All in all, it winds up the 2016 season quite nicely.  For instance, my next Moment involved, for a change, something positive for the United Kingdom...


We had a National Final!
Okay, so it didn't turn out to be the 'Brave New World' that we in the UK had all been hoping for - maybe it was a bit of that 'false dawn' that I was hoping wouldn't happen when the original announcement was made at the end of September last year.  It is still a step in the right direction, it was an exciting process with many OGAE members being involved  in the selection of one of the acts (unfortunately not me) and I got to go to my very first ever National Final.  Joe and Jake were, on the night, the best act there and the amount of positivity that I felt coming from non-Eurovision fans, and even the mainstream press, proves that getting everyone involved in the UK selection process is the way to go, in my opinion.  Here's hoping that BBC Eurovision don't change tack yet again...


Armenia found yet another 'drop dead gorgeous' singer...
Yes, Iveta is definitely going to be in Eurovision Beauty!  One of the best internal selections this year, providing us with arguably one of the most interesting songs and a very memorable stage show in Stockholm.  Not many Eurovision artists could rock a leotard and cape combo quite as well...beauty is obviously all over the Armenian gene pool!


Germany made a right old hash of it all yet again...
Remember this guy?  For about two days in November, Xavier Naidoo was going to be Germany's representative and there would be a song selection show that the public could vote in for him to sing their favourite in Stockholm.  All sounded great, a way of putting the infamous 27th place in the Vienna Final to bed...or so it seemed, until a huge public backlash concerning his past homophobic, racist and right-wing political viewpoints made NDR rapidly change their mind.  Germany might have avoided a PR nightmare but their hastily arranged NF could only provide an act that, in the end, didn't do any better than Ann-Sophie.  I suppose that Jamie-Lee at least got some points this year...


Eurovision met "Mars Attacks"...
I thought that Slim Whitman had yodelled all the Martians to death!  Seriously though, who on earth amongst the FiK producers and directors inflicted that look on poor Blerta Tafani?  Am I the only one who thinks she looks like 'Martian Girl'?
Just me then, eh?  You had to get your fun somewhere whilst watching FiK54...


Belgium provided the mother of all prop nightmares...

Even the Russian, Ukrainian and Azerbaijani delegations would have put their hands up and said "Woah, too much!" I covered Belgium's Eurosong in a lot of detail this year and the lady here was the clear leader after the first Covers show, Laura Tesoro lagging far behind after her version of 'Düm Tek Tek', in my opinion.  Unfortunately for Amaryllis, her own composition was quite weak compared to all the other contestants and trying to make up for by having some sort of prop explosion in a real life 'Beauty and the Beast' scenario just made this seem all the more comical and cringeworthy.  It's still a Moment though...

An entry in a language we never got to hear in Stockholm, performed that way because of the rules of that nation, despite the original lyrics being written in English:

And an artist who had everything perfect during the interval of a NF, 1760 miles away from where she had won hers:

Apart from Sanja from Serbia (who you all know I considered to have the best voice this year), Greta touched my artistic soul (that is buried deep inside me) with her wonderfully powerful imagery and interaction during her entry and was cruelly denied a place in the Final.  Whether her Icelandic version of 'Hear Them Calling' would have got any more points to make it there is debatable but I still loved that show.  As for Barei, her outfit, her look, her performance, her singing, the decent backing singers, the connection with the crowd - it was all perfect in Ukraine, something that was never really recaptured at any other time afterwards.  Too much tinkering made for a poorer show, in my opinion.  Another case of what might have been for my favourites this year...

The 2016 "Defeat snatched from the jaws of victory" award goes to...

Denmark - Lighthouse X?  Really?  When you should have sent this?



I know that Anja's vocals weren't amazing and that you like your all male groups but honestly Denmark, watch "Never Alone" again and tell me that with Anja polishing up her vocals over three months and using something like THAT staging, you weren't possibly looking at yet another win in Sweden.  Or did you only want a decent stab at the OGAE Second Chance Contest?  You do know that Poland had much the same idea:


Although they did send a damn sight better act than a mediocre man band - Michał Szpak was the best male vocalist in Stockholm and a well deserved 8th place in the Final was his reward, but maybe sending Margaret might have secured Poland a far better result?  There was nothing like 'Cool Me Down' in Stockholm, Margaret should have got her live vocals sorted by May and this would have been the most radio friendly, of the moment entry of the year - maybe this year's OGAE SCC will be the alternative reality version of Eurovision 2016...


Last time I saw such a tense finish in the Final, it was 1988...
For Scott Fitzgerald and Celine Dion, read Sergey Lazarev and Jamala!  SVT said that splitting the vote, as they have it in Melodifestivalen, would almost certainly take us into the last one or two televote scores still not knowing the winner and they were spot on.  Dami Im looked to have it all sown up after the jury votes but only getting the fourth best televote score threw the contest wide open again - would Jamala get enough votes to overtake Australia AND stay in front of Russia?  As we now know, Ukraine did but what tension there was - no getting halfway through and knowing who was going to win, a great twist in the voting system and tension kept right up until the very end!  Well played, SVT, I never doubted you a second - maybe...

So that, dear readers, is that for 2016, unless something else crops up of note to review!  Once we have got into June, I rarely discuss anything of note news wise about the Contest that has just happened - the last thing connected to Stockholm (loosely) will be the OGAE SCC which will raise a couple of posts, as I will be on the UK jury again for the third year running.  To briefly sum 2016 up, it was a superb season - great acts got to Stockholm (on the whole - not ManuElla or Serhat), there were some damn good ones left in NFs (for example, see above) and the whole show in May was absolutely amazing.  But you've read my blog, so you knew all this already!

2017 is starting to take shape already - some countries have already said they will be there (not the UK though - still a bit early?) and we have a few months cooling down before September 1st, when it all starts again.  I'll still be blogging but maybe posting some general items of interest, as I always do - I just realised that I'm almost at my 3rd anniversary and I still haven't covered Katrina & The Waves!  So that's one summer article to do.  But I digress, we are 340 days away from SF1 in Ukraine (if the dates stay as provisionally proposed)...