214 Floodgates === [00:00:00] Mike: Okie dokie, Ben's not here this week but it's still early January so it should be relatively quiet. Let's check in on what's going on Eurovision wise. Hello and welcome to the Eurowhat, episode 214 dropping on January 16th, 2024. We are a pair of Americans trying to make sense of the Eurovision Song Contest. I'm Mike McComb and I'm here with my host, Ben Smith. Hey Ben. Ben? Oh, right, in this episode, we'll get caught up on a very full week of process updates, song drops, and the kickoff to national final season. So full disclosure, I legitimately thought that this was going to be a relatively quiet week and that Ben being out for Mystery Hunt was going to be a minor obstacle. I had a germ of an idea for how I was going to present the episode solo. But then a ton of news came in last Monday that caused me to reconsider. Then on Tuesday, even more news and national final song lists dropped, so I decided to not bother with any bits or funny business, and by the time Thursday rolled around, I was thankful that there weren't any artist or song selections to have to contend with. Georgia heard me and lulled. LMAO'd even. [00:01:33] Georgia announces Nutsa for Malmo --- [00:01:33] Mike: On Friday, Georgia announced that Nutsa Buziladze will be their representative in Malmo. So when a new contestant is announced, I try to find a video where their name is said, ideally by that person, so that we can try to get the correct pronunciation of their name. When I put Nutza's name into the YouTube search, Autofill added American Idol, which I did not expect. Uh, so it turns out that Nutza competed in last year's edition and reached the top 12. She has run the full gamut of singing competitions, including Georgia's Got Talent, The Voice of Turkey, the New Wave Festival, Albania's Kenga Magik, and Russia's version of All Together Now. In terms of her Eurovision resume, Her coach on the Voice of Turkey was Hadise, who represented Turkey in 2009 with the song Dum Tek Tek, and Nutse also was the runner up in Georgia's national selection way back in 2017 with the song White Horses Run. So, this seems like a Pretty solid pick. Now all she needs is a song, Georgia's broadcaster is still looking for that song and accepting submissions. If you have a song in your back pocket, you can email that to Eurovision at 1tv. ge, and if you get it in by January 30th, you might If you're wondering why a singer from the country and not the state of Georgia was competing on American Idol, I don't have an answer for you. Michael Rice, who represented the UK in 2019, he's apparently in the audition pool for this season of American Idol. And also over on Ben's favorite show, America's Got Talent, Australia's 2022 representative, Sheldon Riley, who is being coached by Spice Girl Mel B, performed Sweden's 2023 entry, Tattoo. There's a thesis in there somewhere about American identity, I think. Anyway, back to Eurovision. [00:03:44] Video links for The Draw, Semis, and Grand Final are live --- [00:03:44] Mike: The contest has taken care of some logistics this week. The Eurovision YouTube page has posted the links for the live streams for The Draw, the two semifinals, and the grand final. What may be of interest for fans in the US, the videos do not appear to be geo blocked, at least not at the moment. Sam, a listener of the show, wrote in and reminded us that last year's feeds were geo blocked immediately when they were posted on the YouTube channel, so There might be a change in the works, or someone forgot to hit a toggle somewhere, uh, we will definitely be keeping an eye on this, as well as what Peacock's plans may or may not be for this year's shows. [00:04:31] Cyprus and Belgium release some song details --- [00:04:31] Mike: In other news, this week featured a lot of song updates, even though we do not have any new official entries at the moment. Cyprus announced that the song for Cilia Capsis will be titled Liar, and that it is co written by Dimitris Kontopoulos and Elke Thiel. Dimitris is part of the Dream Team, uh, which has been behind previous entries from Sergey Lazarev, Natalia Goryenko As well as songs from Belarus, Estonia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan. In other words, there's a really strong pedigree here. So, really much more interested in this entry now. Uh, no word yet on when Lyre will be released. Belgium's representative Mousti is still in production on his song, but he has put out a call for fan support. He's trying to pull together a virtual choir, similar to what Dathi Frere did for his 2021 entry, 10 Years. We have a link to the instructions and submission form in the show notes. If you are interested, do it now, because submissions close Wednesday, January 17th. So, tomorrow, as this episode drops. Uh, so. Go ahead and pause, I can wait. [00:05:48] Songs revealed for Ireland, Finland, Luxembourg, Ukraine, Latvia --- [00:05:48] Mike: Okay, uh, in terms of songs you can actually listen to at this point, a ton became available this week. Ireland announced the six acts that will be competing in this year's Euro Song, and they've released their entries one by one throughout the year. Last week. the biggest name in the set is arguably Erika Cody, who's an R & B singer and, was the runner up in the 2022 edition of Ireland's Dancing with the Stars. your song is, still scheduled to take place on Friday, January 26th. Finland, took a similar approach for announcing UMK. they hosted their live reveal of the seven acts competing last Wednesday. and started the daily drop of songs soon after on Thursday. Four of the songs are available by the time this episode drops, and the last one of the set will be released at midnight Eastern European time this coming Friday. Scion Kicks were the first act announced. They were the runners up in the 2022 edition of UMK, so good to see them back in the mix. Finland's final is scheduled for Saturday, February 10th. Luxembourg and Ukraine, they had already revealed their artists and song titles, but this week the songs have become publicly available. Luxembourg is just about ready to go with holding their national final on Saturday, January 27th, so just a couple weekends from now. Ukraine did their reveal on Thursday, and that also included the running order draw for Vidbeer. Yak Tak with La La La will open the show, and Nahaba will close the show with the song Glass. on Monday, Ukraine's broadcaster opened up voting for selecting who will be on this year's jury. Some of the candidates include Kateryna Pavlenko from Goa, Jamala, Andrii Danilko, aka Verka Sarduchka, and Pavlo Shilko, who was one of the hosts for the 2005 contest in Kyiv. Voting closes this coming Monday, and Vidbeer is scheduled for Saturday, February 3rd. I think the big surprise last week was Latvia dropping their field for this year's edition of Supernova. There are 15 songs that are scheduled to compete. Agni Ska is the only Eurovision alum in the mix. She's part of the band, Triana Park, who represented Latvia in 2017. Uh, the rest of the field are mostly new names in the Latvian selection process, which might be the change needed to break the country's. [00:08:29] Mike: Supernova will probably happen in February, but the announcement did not include anything about dates or format, so TBD on that. with all of these songs, we are collecting them in our Eurovision Selection Season 2024 playlist on Spotify. We're already approaching 200 songs, and a lot of the heavy hitters have not Dropped yet. So, uh, there's already over eight hours of new music available. the link to the playlist is in our show notes, or you can find it at euro what.com/selection season. other process updates, Croatia has updated its format for this year's. Dora, the competition has moved to Zagreb. And we'll feature two semi finals along with the final. the semis will take place on Thursday, February 22nd and Friday the 23rd. And the final, has moved to Sunday the 25th. So, uh, yeah, kind of getting out of any potential Saturday traffic jams. And, it's nice to have one or two Sunday. Finals in the mix. opting for a less straightforward process, Malta! They have somehow stretched out the next phase of their MESC format to be a week long extravaganza For three nights, starting on January 29th, there are going to be interviews with the 12 contestants and behind the scenes coverage of the making of their music videos. Each act received funding from the broadcaster to produce a music video based on the songs that were selected in their quarterfinal. I don't even know what to call it at this point, but, uh, yeah. And then on February 1st, the music videos will be played in full. And on February 3rd, each song will be performed in a TV studio with a jury and the home audience voting for a winner. In our planning doc, Ben described this as having big, it's my birthday month energy, and I don't think he's wrong in that. [00:10:35] Subscribe to the Eurowhat AV Club --- [00:10:35] Mike: So, as I mentioned, Ben is out this week, because he is doing Mystery Hunt. if you have no idea what that is, we did a bonus episode about it over on our Patreon. when Ben's team hosted Mystery Hunt a couple years ago, he, of course, included a massive Eurovision puzzle. so if you want to hear the story behind that and all of our bonus episodes, you can join the Eurowhat AV Club by subscribing on our Patreon page at Patreon. com slash Eurowhat. no pressure. We appreciate you and everyone who listens to the Eurowhat regardless of any financial support. Telling your friends about the show, subscribing on your favorite podcast app, or leaving a five star review on Apple Podcasts is just as awesome as joining the Patreon. So again, thank you for listening! So, that is everything that happened through Friday of last week. A lot more stuff than I was anticipating. I thought it was mostly going to be talking about the shows that happened on Saturday, which featured our first national selection programs of 2024. [00:11:40] Moldova's Etapa Nationala Auditions --- [00:11:40] Mike: Moldova kicked things off with the auditions for Etapa Nacionala. Uh, there were 30 songs from 28 artists that were presented to a panel of judges. And aside from a couple of tech hiccups at the start, it was a pretty good show. there wasn't a lot of silliness or excessive costuming. Uh, the performances were mostly straightforward run throughs of each song. I think the most unexpected element may have been the return of Tudor Bumbach. Uh, he's an 82 year old gentleman. who has tried out for Moldova's national final several times over the years. When I was looking for the Moldova tracks on Spotify, I discovered that his entry, Tudorel, has an official trap remix. Um, yeah. I don't think that is his normal genre. But, uh, glad to see him experimenting, I guess. Uh, sadly, he did not perform that version and he also did not advance in the competition. there were 11 songs that did move forward. And in my opinion, I think the right entries were selected. Uh, did, did sit through all of the auditions and yeah, there, it was a pretty good field. Like, I mean, there, there were some highs, there were some lows, but nothing, uh, too off the wall. I think Moldova has some options available to them, so their final is scheduled for Saturday, February 17th. [00:13:15] Norway's NRK MGP 2024 Begins --- [00:13:15] Mike: Norway's NRK Melodi Grand Prix kicked off, the first heat featured six of the 18 acts competing to go to Eurovision. This week's heat featured Margaret Berger. who finished 4th at Eurovision in 2013, and that experience was fully on display, during her performance of Oblivion, which was super polished and a step above what the other acts had on offer. I was not at all surprised to see her advance. Ingrid Jasmine, who sang Eya, was actually first to be announced as a finalist. The show is continuing the format from last year, where They specifically tell contestants whether or not they are advancing instead of just naming the winners. I'm not really a fan of this. I think it can sometimes lead to a not good look, but it does provide a final two drama moment, sort of, when the last finalist is revealed. It's very Tyra holding. One photo of the last two models standing. So, the final two this week was the inspiration for our cover art on this episode, and that's because the other big showy performance came from Gothminister and his song, We Come Alive. You can probably fill in the blanks of what Gothminister looks like based on the name. Gothminister, though I will say the crown that he wears has the height of a mitre, so he looks more like a goth bishop, but I'm not going to pretend to understand how the goth diocese operates or how rankings are determined. Anyway, he was the last to be announced as advancing to the final. I think these were The right three entries to advance, but to my eye, Oblivion was the clear winner of this heat. The show was not without controversy, however. During one of the host segments, a member of the audience walked up to where the hosts were on the floor, said Pardon me for the interruption and made a statement about the war in Gaza. The camera switched to an alternate view of two of the hosts so that the protester was not visible on screen and the hosts just sort of stood there awkwardly waiting for the statement to finish. There did not appear to be any Security intervention, and the protester left as soon as they finished speaking, so it was all very polite? I actually missed this when it happened, as I had other tabs open while watching Lithuania, but there was an article and video posted on NRK's news site, Soon after the show wrapped, I would not be surprised if stage invasions are a more common occurrence this particular selection season. I don't think anybody was in any danger in this particular instance, but, uh Yeah, uh, hopefully things will not be escalating. [00:16:28] Lithuania launches Eurovizija.lt --- [00:16:28] Mike: Speaking of Lithuania, this week was the debut of their new process titled, uh, Eurovisia. lt. while I was watching, my husband walked by and, he missed the period in the title, when it was on the screen. And he was just like, why is it called Eurovisialt? And I have decided that that is now the canonical pronunciation of the show. Congratulations, Lithuania. Aside from the name, Lithuania's format changes are pretty significant. Instead of it being three weeks of qualifiers, two weeks of semis, and a final, The competition is now 5 heats of 8 contestants, with only 2 acts each week moving on to the final. there's still the 50 50 split of jury and televote, with the jury functioning as the tiebreaker. while that is functionally the same, Same as before. Unless there's major disagreement, it will probably be the winner of the jury vote and the winner of the televote advancing each week. I mean, at least that was the case this week. Sylvester Belt won the jury with the song Luke Telk, uh, which is one I'm actually keeping an eye on. I thought that was a really good performance and there was a vibe to the song that's like, oh, this is catching my ear in a way that caused me to stop what I was doing and watch what was happening on screen. The audience put Sylvester in second, so I think the audience is responding to it as well. the winner of the televote was VB Gang's Kaboom, uh, which really had just silliness on overdrive, very costumey, uh, chicken dancing, all of the, uh, Quirks of recent eurovision, uh, party entries? I guess, I don't know. I, I didn't particularly care for it, but I was not at all surprised to see it with the tele vote. especially in week one, when participation in the tele vote is usually pretty low. Like, I think there was maybe about 4,000, 5,000 votes total. across the field. And yeah, that that will grow week to week. But there is a distinct advantage to performing in the first week of the show. So yeah, although I'm still resistant to the changes to Lithuania's process this year, I really loved Pabandom is Naujo. The overall show, I mean, it was a good show. And the song standards are still really high. I didn't think that there were any songs that were Objectively bad or anything like that. There was it, I really just kinda came down to, eh, I like this one. I'm not responding to this one. Or like, Ooh, I'd like to hear that one again. So, um, yeah, like, it's a tough format, so if it raises the bar for quality, uh, that's not a bad trade off. [00:19:26] This week: "Veronika", Eesti Laul, Austria's Artist, Germany and Portugal's Contestants --- [00:19:26] Mike: Huh. So, coming up this week, Norway and Lithuania will have their second heats, Slovenia will reveal Raven's song, Veronica. And Estonia is going to hold its Estelal semi final. Estelal has 20 songs competing this year, but 5 are automatically through to next month's final. So, the remaining 15 are battling for the 5 remaining slots. I am really looking forward to the opener. we do know nothing about these drugs by 5 Minust and Pullup. Uh, which instantly joined my main playlist the first time I heard it. The energy level is very high. I think it's going to be a really fun opener. Austria will, have announced their artist by the time this episode has dropped. So, uh, yeah, news is already happening once again. On Thursday, Portugal will be revealing the 20 songs competing in this year's 60th edition of Festival da Cancao. And on Friday, Germany will be announcing the contestants for Das Deutsche Finale, as well as making tickets for the show available. Germany also announced that Barbara Schoenberger will be hosting the festivities once again, and the show is scheduled to take place on February 6th. 16th. For now, that's going to do it for this episode of the Eurowhat. Thanks for listening. The Eurowhat podcast is hosted by Mike McComb, that's me, and Ben Smith, that's not me. Our full coverage of the 2024 Eurovision Song Contest List including calendars and playlists can be found on our website at Eurowhat. com. You can also follow us on social media at Eurowhat. Next time on the Eurowhat, Ben will be here to discuss Slovenia's song, Estelal, and all the Eurovision news.