A-lister
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- December 28, 2009
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So, Semi 1 is over and here is my verdict on the first impression of the night.
The Good : Well, I have to hand it to SVT. Again Sweden came up with a marvelous stage that was fresh and new, the production in general great. Zoe and Austria (second best entry in the semi imo) qualifying was such a relief, the song is cute and she did a great job sounding almost identical as in the studio version where many of the others struggled live. Happy to see Czech Rep. finally making it, the song is nothing wow but it's a decent ballad and deserved to qualify. Petra is always great but a bit too tame this time around, Måns also did a good job... someone needs to check Petra's styling though because she looked like a drag-queen basically
The Bad : Some surprising technical flaws here and there, the sound was bad in the beginning (but they luckely fixed it before the first entry) and glitches with the graphics (the country boards in the end) which I wasn't expecting tbh. Not entirely happy that the mess which is the Armenian entry and the utterly dull Dutch entry that evokes absolutely no feelings good or bad qualified, but I somehow expected both of them to do so no major surprises really... Russia is still overrated as hell, cool show and good performance by Sergey but the song is just dated and cliché and I really hope it won't win because it's hardly what ESC needs.
The Ugly : Iceland not qualifying while having one of the best songs this year and a pro performance will go down as one of those moments in ESC history where it was just plain unfair. SVT of course had to bring in politics into the show (as already warned prior), the middle act was good as far as dancing and visual goes but the whole mentioning of "refugees" and the cheesy ending I would have liked to not see (politics should not be part of ESC period!), though it wasn't as bad as I initially thought it'd be so I can "live" with it (in particular since the dance was really good).
All in all, 2016 is without a single doubt a very weak year musically entry-wise, there is no discussion about that... one of the weakest in a very long time in fact. But as far as production goes, the show was really good and the qualifiers I guess were ok in this context though I would have exchanged Armenia, Cyprus and the Netherlands to Iceland, Bosnia and Finland (yeah Finland's performance sucked but the song is still one of the better ones this year).
The Good : Well, I have to hand it to SVT. Again Sweden came up with a marvelous stage that was fresh and new, the production in general great. Zoe and Austria (second best entry in the semi imo) qualifying was such a relief, the song is cute and she did a great job sounding almost identical as in the studio version where many of the others struggled live. Happy to see Czech Rep. finally making it, the song is nothing wow but it's a decent ballad and deserved to qualify. Petra is always great but a bit too tame this time around, Måns also did a good job... someone needs to check Petra's styling though because she looked like a drag-queen basically
The Bad : Some surprising technical flaws here and there, the sound was bad in the beginning (but they luckely fixed it before the first entry) and glitches with the graphics (the country boards in the end) which I wasn't expecting tbh. Not entirely happy that the mess which is the Armenian entry and the utterly dull Dutch entry that evokes absolutely no feelings good or bad qualified, but I somehow expected both of them to do so no major surprises really... Russia is still overrated as hell, cool show and good performance by Sergey but the song is just dated and cliché and I really hope it won't win because it's hardly what ESC needs.
The Ugly : Iceland not qualifying while having one of the best songs this year and a pro performance will go down as one of those moments in ESC history where it was just plain unfair. SVT of course had to bring in politics into the show (as already warned prior), the middle act was good as far as dancing and visual goes but the whole mentioning of "refugees" and the cheesy ending I would have liked to not see (politics should not be part of ESC period!), though it wasn't as bad as I initially thought it'd be so I can "live" with it (in particular since the dance was really good).
All in all, 2016 is without a single doubt a very weak year musically entry-wise, there is no discussion about that... one of the weakest in a very long time in fact. But as far as production goes, the show was really good and the qualifiers I guess were ok in this context though I would have exchanged Armenia, Cyprus and the Netherlands to Iceland, Bosnia and Finland (yeah Finland's performance sucked but the song is still one of the better ones this year).
