The Eurovision Buzz

One of the struggles Macedonia may have with the jury vote is that this is quite grown-up and adult juries tend to favour a younger presentation at JESC, but the unknown quantity of the online vote may counter balance that.

I think this might struggle to be remembered in the jury vote, but with Portugal riding high in Eurovision-land at the moment Mariana may well gather some support in the online vote.

I know I've skipped one, it should be Macedonia next but I haven't found out anything about the lovely Mina that I can tell you about - I'll come back to them and move on up the list to Italy and their artist Maria Inside Firoe. Born in Carrara on the Tuscan coast, at 4 years old Maria Iside started dancing in the ‘Danzabilmente’ group, which promotes the integration of disabilities through the dance. In 2015 she stepped out from her schools choir and began singing solo and taking part in several talent shows and contests at both locally and nationally. Last year she was a finalist in the national contest ‘Cantagiro’ Earlier this year Maria Iside qualified for the Semi-Final of Cantagiro and made her debut as an actress in a theatre production. There is something so very distinctive about contemporary Italian music and this mid-tempo power ballad fits right into it with its driving drums and strong yet ethereal vocal. Members of Danzabilmente can be seen in the songs official video, I wonder if they'll be on stage with Maria Iside too. I'm not sure if I'm allowed to have favourites and I don't really have one actually favourite but give me a top five and this one will feature! Italy tends to play it quite cool at Junior Eurovision and then sweep up the points at the end of the show, maybe this year will be the same.

Doubling up today as we missed a couple of days in our play-through for this years Junior Eurovision entire. This time it’s turn of last year host country Malta and their singer Gianluca Cilia and the song ‘Dowra Tond.’ Lego-enthusiast Gianluca started singing at the age of 6 and currently takes singing and music theory lessons at the ‘Harmonic Ensemble’. Gianluca won his first major festival in 2015 at ‘Oltreoceano’ in Palermo, Italy. A year later he earned the right to represent Malta in an international singing festival in Romania, where he finished third with his original song ’Mamma Io canto per te’. took part and ultimately won the first edition of ‘Arpeggio’, held in Malta. Fun is the best way to describe this song! That’s the best word to describe this song. It’s retro pop at its most innocent and Gianluca has all the chutzpah to deliver it in his inimitable cheeky way. He’s a 10-year-old Maltese Cee-Lo Green and with Malta being one of the power-houses of Junior Eurovision, this is sure to get the audience dancing!

It's the turn of The Netherlands in our Junior Eurovision play-through. This four-piece boyband are set to bring some variety to the show this year as all but two countries have sent solo artists. The band was formed after auditions for ‘Junior Songfestival’. The name was then chosen by the public on social media and represents the four members and their combined strength. Music competitions are not new to any of the members, they have all been singing since they were small children and now combine their singing and dance experience to form this group. In the official video we see the boys dancing their way through Amsterdam’s streets and canals to this mid-tempo pop song in which they ask the girls to ‘Love Me’. This is definitely main stream pop which is not dissimilar to The Netherlands song from last years contest, except this time we have four boys instead of four girls. the Netherlands brings us the only group in this year's contest and for visual effect on the stage that will most likely land them in good stead.

It's interesting that Poland have sent something quite similar to their song from ESC song and also their JESC song from last year, even though neither did particularly well. Maybe they are waiting for their time to come but I fear that if the running order goes against them then unfortunately Alicja's fabulous vocals may get forgotten.

Overall this song is very powerful and Polina delivers it really well, the question will come as to whether the jury and the voting public think it’s too grown up for Junior Eurovision, and for me the very poor English writing takes it down a notch or two.

 Serbia have not had much luck in recent years, so Irinia and Jana will be hoping to change that. Whilst personally I really like this song, my worry is that the song itself is quite forgettable it doesn’t offer any vocal variations or any big ‘jury notes’ as we’ve come to call them. If they stick with the styling of it from the National Finals it also may be a bit to ‘way out’ for the Junior ESC audience.

Personally I love the way this was staged at the national final in Kyiv, the stage looked great with painted pallets creating height and dimension to the stage and I’m hoping that this simplicity of staging will carry forward to Tbilisi. In the national final performance Anastasiya had a little trouble with her vocal on the long sustained notes, falling slightly under the pitch a few times, and the English pronunciation could do with a little work (you might hear me say that quite a bit in this series of play-through’s) but she’s had plenty of time to work on that since winning the Ukrainian ticket to Tbilisi. All in all a strong entry from Ukraine.

Just in case you PED (post eurovision depression) has kicked in early, we have news of Eesti Laul 2018 tickets!! ESC Buzz was there this year and can highly recommend Eesti Laul and Tallinn as a FABULOUS weekend destination! 

Blanche showing both the powerful voice and the fragile presentation.

Confirmation is from the band’s website, so the exact placement in the running order is still to be seen. But this is a curiously brave choice.

The official website looks back at Spain’s debut on the preview party scene!

Looking at the Song Contest from the competitive side, who benefits from the Russia? 

With Channel One refusing to show the Contest on TV this year, the EBU confirm that this rules breach means that Russia will not be able to take part in the Song Contest. We’re down to 42 countries...

Speaking of previews, you are following @Dimispice85 and his euro-guides at Pop Corker?

ESC Insight’s Ellie Chalkley previews SF1 for Listen Outside.