Eurovision 2012 – The afternoon’s rehearsals saw semifinal 2 acts take to the Crystal Hall stage for the second time. Rehearsals and press conferences from Serbia, FRY Macedonia, The Netherlands, Malta, Belarus, Portugal, Ukraine & Bulgaria took place. See what you think to their second rehearsals. Serbia’s Željko Joksimović was a class act. The song has grown and grown on me. It looked good on the screens for TV despite the lights and backdrop not looking particularly special in the hall. People seem to like violins in Eurovision too.
Kaliopi put in a fine vocal performance for her rehearsal for FRY Macedonia. The strobes are a little bit busy in places and the band a little static.
Joan Franka from The Netherlands is still persisting with the full red indian headdress, apparently her trademark look. Not the strongest of vocals at all.
Malta’s Kurt Kajella does some nifty feet shuffling along with his guitarists as a fake crowd on the backlighting go wild. Some pretty effects, and an ok voice.
Litesound were up next for Belarus, with the musicians in the band making strange contortion type shapes over their arty mic stands. A bit gimmicky? Interesting graphics used for the backdrop.
Portugal’s beautiful city scene lighting actually helps the song sound prettier, but it’s still lost for me in a sea of ballads despite Phillipa Sousa‘s great vocals.
Gaitana has made me change my mind now, and I think Ukraine will probably qualify like they normally do. Effective use of backing screens to make it look like there’s more dancers, and very brightly coloured. Strong vocals.
Sofi from Bulgaria has poor moves, on a boring stage set. No dancers for what is essentially a dancefloor filler. The backdrop changes from not enough to too much throughout the song. I’m really not a fan of this presentation which seems to have had little thought go into it.
What did you think to these second rehearsals?
Prinz Blog has reported that it is forbidden to play Armenian ESC songs in Euro Club. Prinz Blog’s DJ was apparently told so after he had played a remix of ‘Apricot Stone’ last night by the manager of Euro Club who said that they “would be in real trouble if they played Aremnian music here”. If this is true … will the EBU ever take action or let the Azernaijani authorities insult and humiliate everyone, including the spirit of ESC?
0 tolerance!!!! in which century are these guy living I wonder!!! what is EBU scared of?
Update: Prinz Blog has just posted an article which tells us that the Azerbaijani staff and volunteers happily danced along to ‘Apricot Stone’ … nevertheless the authorities’ explanation for banning Armenian songs from Euro Club is “that it would hurt the feelings of the many volunteers”. The people in Azerbaijan are certainly not as stupid and narrow-minded as those in power. Btw, according to Prinz Blog some German media (including very popular RTL) have shown interest in this story.
And btw, I think that the EBU is becoming as corrupt as the IOC and the FIFA have been for many years. Whereas they only put snippets of all other participants’ 2nd rehearsals on eurovision.tv, they made an exception for Sweden an showed Loreen’s full rehearsal. Well, I like ‘Euphoria’ but by know I am so pissed that I would cheer and celebrate if Sweden got stuck in the semi … which of course won’t happen …
Togravus, i don’t think that it’s Loreen’s fault that eurovision.tv only posted her full 2nd rehearsal, so you shouldn’t be pissed on her or Sweden imo. And btw, everyone can find very easily on youtube the full 2nd rehearsals from all the other countries, so i don’t think it’s an advantage for Sweden that eurovision.tv only posted her full 2nd rehearsal.
This is about equal treatment for everyone by the EBU (fair play) and not about whether I can find the clips somewhere else on YT or not … but I agree with you, it is not Loreen’s fault (Björkman’s perhaps though …) and she is still in with a chance to get one of my 5 votes next Thursday. However, she will certainly have to improve her vocals. In rehearsal 2, we colud only hear the music during the verses..