SF1 fall out

Well... what on earth happened there...?!!?!?!?

I am not going to go into too much detail here about each song and everything but suffice to say that last night's results were a little surprising.

Firstly we have the non-qaulification on Turkey and Armenia. One may have thought that diaspora voting would've got them through- so why did they fail?
One view is that the fact that countries such as Ned, Bel, Ger and Swe (which have high levels of diaspora) were not voting in this semi, so that was a good 30 odd points unavialable.
Secondly, both of their performances were not good. Armenia was breathy and her dancing was awful and she looked realy awkard. Turkey show was very weak, the outfits were really quite unflattering and there was no real schtick to it. I mean the girl in the ball was downright confusing. One could almost say boring.
Thirdly the songs were weak. Here, this fact would have greatly affected the jury vote. The jury is made up of 'music professionals' and I think they would more than likely pick up on the technical aspect of the songs and how they are written as well a their 'contemporary-ness' - of which niether of the songs in question were...

Norway also failed. Although the song was a fan favourite her vocal perfoamance on the night was poor. Not only was she not in tune but she also did a lot of screechy talking to the crowd between bits. The lveels of the backing singers were all over the place and I feel the backdrop was very muted and did not suit the colourful and African nature of the song.

Georgia and Switzerland however did get through. Georgia's song looked and sounded very different (not good - just different!) I feel a lot of ex-soviet power was behind this song as well as votes from possibly younger people who like this style of Linkin Park type stuff. Switzerland is a bit a funny one. No diaspora and no real neighbours. The juries would have liked this but I also think the viewers may have like the style of this. I mean- I could actually hear what she was singing !!!

We then also have the surprising qualifaction of Lithania. I would say that 90% of people would not have had this on their napkin. So where did it get the votes from?
I would almost definately look towards the juries. I know that many micked it was a Disney number - but is there much diference between this and Jade from the UK? Same kind of thing really. This kind of 'muscial' style number is not easy to write, or to sing and in fairness he was bang on every note.
From this, those people who like musicals possible would have also voted for this. Now Lithuania does not have such a wide spread diaspora as other countries do, however some of the ex-Soviet countries in this semi may have put their weight behind the song. That aside it probably would ahve got some votes from most countries and if it wasn't in the top 9, the juries would have given this one its wild card.

What does this tell us about semi 2...?

Bascially, you sing in tune. Perform well.
If you don't - you fail.

We may finally have a song contest again....