I think I'm in love with Eurovision...

Review of Eurovision 2016

Hosts of the Eurovision 2016 - Måns Zelmerlöw and Petra Mede

This is the first time I'm watching Eurovision and it's a love at first sight... or first hearing, Before I got onto Eurovision, my impression of it is it's just a contest of awful European trance music with crazy contestants aka beard lady, footballer girlfriend, etc. And I am SO wrong! All the contestants, yes all, sang amazingly well, and the songs consisted of  all sort of genres, from Pop, Ballad to Rock, and if I do say so myself, most of the songs are even better than the mainstream popular music.

So what is a Eurovision?

Eurovison, also known as Eurovision Song Contest, is a TV song competition held annually since 1956 among the member countries of the European Broadcasting Union, with the exception of Australia who was specially invited this year & last year in commemoration for the show's 50 years anniversary. Each participating country must submit 1 original song to be performed in front of live audience and live worldwide TV viewers, a record-breaking 204 million of them this year!

Let the Eurovision 2016 begin!

First thing first. LOVE the hosts, Måns Zelmerlöw and Petra Mede! Måns is the winner of Eurovision 2015 and Petra is a beloved comedian of Sweden, she's also the host of 2015. This is the first time I heard of them but they have that charisma which will make you love them almost instantly. Is it their wonderfully sounded accents? Is it their good looks? Is it their humour? I don't know but one thing that I'm sure of, is that they are very close in stealing the whole show!

One interesting thing about Eurovision is that the winning country of the previous year will get to host next year contest. Måns won it last year, Måns is Swede, and so Eurovision 2016 is held in the Ericsson Globein Stockholm, Sweden! There are a total of 3 shows, Semi-Final 1, Semi-Final 2 and the Final, a total of 42 countries participated but only 26 countries will make it into the Final!

The Eurovision 2016 Final

Contestants will perform the same original song that they did in the semi-finals. The big 5, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, UK + the host, Sweden do not need to go through the semi-finals, so this is the first time they're performing in front of live TV viewers. I truly enjoyed all the song performances, but here are my top 5 performances:

My number 1 choice is Dami Im of Australia, and it's a clear winner to me! Beautiful song accompanied by a powerful vocal! Just take a listen yourself:

But alas, Dami only managed to finish in a close 2nd position.

The Voting

Voting is divided into 2 parts, the professional jury votes and the Televotes from the TV viewers of the 42 European countries eligible to vote. The only other rule is that you can't vote for your own country. 

In the Jury voting section, Australia is the clear winner leading by a huge margin of 320 points ahead of Ukraine with 211 points, France is 3rd and Russia 6th. You can't help but sense a tiny dose of political influence in the voting of the Jury Votes, especially the tension between Ukraine & Russia, and Germany getting last place, is it because their singer is too cute to their liking or is it because Merkel's political view is not cute enough?

Australia appear to be running away with the trophy but there's still part 2 of voting to go, the Televotes! Things didn't went as good to Australia as they did in the Jury vote, Australia can only finished 4th in the Televote's section. To increase the tension & excitement of the voting, Russia & Ukraine were of course last to receive their result, at this point, Ukraine only needed 301 points to overtake Australia, Russia will need 382, meaning if Ukraine got 302 or lower, thy will lose the trophy to Russia. In the end, Ukraine got... 323!

Ukraine was crowned the Eurovision 2016's champion, with the song "1944" performed by Jamala! And Jamala ended the show nicely with this quote: "I know that you sing a song about peace and love, but actually, I really want peace and love to everyone. Thank you Europe – welcome to Ukraine!”