Azerbaijan – Tonight the final part of the first semi-final was broadcast in Azerbaijan. The lucky qualifier after the “week of performances” is Chingiz Mustafayev. The 11 candidates performed a foreign song on Monday, an Azerbaijani song on Tuesday, a Eurovision entry on Wednesday, a song of their choice on Thursday, and today the winner was determined. In each of the 7 qualification rounds 11 artists will compete and one of them will qualify for the final. Watch a recap of the competitors and Chingiz’s performance of “Milim” (Israel 2010)
Next week the second semi-final will be held with another 11 participants. Say tuned. We will inform you about everything there is to know.
After watching the recap, I would have chosen Zülfünaz Racabova, but Chingiz has a nice enough voice. I would advise him not to go for a song like ‘Milim’ though. Congratulations and good luck.
well he was vocally the best, since 5 of them were not getting a single note right, and the others were rather messy… i didn’t check their foreign performances, but the azeir songs ones should be interesting, i’m sure they’d be all much better there : Azerbaijan can settle for mediocre singers with very modern songs and get top 5 but a victory would mean a great singer in an actual azeri thing, which doesn’t mean it has to be folk and ancient, but truthful to their music industry, not fake pop. Most of them can’t sing English, Safura was rather off there too, and it was modern and weird, it would never have won and its 5th place is rather miraculous (i expected it switched with Armenia) and definitely unfair to Belgium.
I often like to compare them to the Balkans back then, when they were very much into Eurovision crazyness and wanted desperately to win. Unlike the baltics, who took the victory almost as soon as they took part, the Balkans took much longer to win it : most Croatian songs were too folk to sound true to a western ear, slovenia was trying the cheap modern and Bosnia was being extremely bald, with songs amazingly good but which would never have taken home points from everyone (i’m referring mostly to the 97, 99 and 01 efforts)… Serbia was right to send something that was authentic with a very modern twist to all of this, so that everyone would encourage both the folk parts of “Molitva” and its more contemporary outlooks. Now the power has shifted : the balkans, like the baltics, got tired of Eurovision after paying so much for hosting it and after the first signs of bad results (if old Europe would do that, it wouldn’t just be Italy, Monaco and Luxembourg out, but also Belgium, Netherlands, Portugal, Ireland…) Czech Republic has barely tried three times (with three craps) and decided it wasn’t good, but Belgium or Germany did wait a hell much more to do any better. Caucasus is the “new comers” and as such, their eurovision craze is strong. They push very hard, get mad at each injustice (whether it’s a true one or an imagined one) like Armenia did about the votes. Always the top 10 has awaited the three countries east of Turkey. I’m expecting a victory from one of them during the next 5 years. Sure enough, right after that, having the actual spotlight on them, and everyone discussing their politics, society, incapacity to host a major event, they’ll definitely bury Eurovision for a while. Especially now that the West seems to look closely into Eurovision has great potentials (German victory, Belgium 6th, France among the 7 countries to remain top 12 in two years along with Greece)… So who is actually getting profits in all this? Ukraine and Russia, at the actual center of a triangle between Caucasus, Balkan and Baltics. No wonder that, as of now, they’re the two “best esc countries ever” in % of performances/results.
You make some good points, Morgan. Anyway, I tend to pay less and less attention to the voting part of the show, because 100% televoting has ruined it for me. The return of the jurors have changed things a bit, still there is too much diaspora voting for me to take the voting procedure too seriously. Statistiscs may say that Russia and Ukraine are the best ever whatever, nevertheless, imo, they have a long way to go before they reach that level in ESC.
i could rewrite it for you and make it more “stats” base first
Shevek I agree that Russia and Ukraine need better and stronger esc songs, but they’re countries who do take some risks like their 2010 songs and tend to chose variety : other countries who try that don’t get as lucky because they don’t get political vote, how unfair
i wonder if that means only one song will be sung by everyone at the finale or not?