Eurovision Times Awards 2017 – Every year, the summer is the calm after the storm so it’s the perfect time to resume the “Eurovision Times Awards” to give prizes to the best in every category! After a week in this category, it’s time to announce the winner and hand out the Frida. So who will win?
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Delegation Awards
Best Internal Choice
The
five entries nominated were:
- Armenia‘s Artsvik
- Azerbaijan‘ DiHaj
- Belgium‘s Blanche
- Bulgaria‘s Kristian Kostov
- FYR Macedonia‘s Jana Burčeska
Former winners are: Anouk (Netherlands, 2013), The Common Linnets (Netherlands, 2014), Loïc Nottet (Belgium, 2015) and Amir Haddad (France, 2016). Can the country escape this Franco-Benelux axis? And the Frida goes to…
BELGIUM
“City Lights” was performed by Blanche. Representing Belgium in the Eurovision Song Contest 2017, it was written by Pierre Dumoulin & Ellie Delvaux and composed by Pierre Dumoulin & Emmanuel Delcourt. It finished 4th with 363 points. Nominated seven times overall in ET Awards 2017, “Best Internal Choice” is its first so far! Congratulations!
You can click here to look at the full recommendations and nominations from last week’s article! There were 52 recommendations for 11 countries in the first round and 111 votes were cast in an open poll, in exactly one week, among the 5 nominees. The complete detailed results will be announced once all polls are closed so in another week!
Now let’s watch the winning entry once more:
A great choice since Belgium is an incredible country when it comes to internal choice, and “City Lights” as a song and an esc entry was a very daring move. Also, Bulgarian bubble huh? That should have been its easiest win if it existed imo.
Maybe the bubble burst?
Maybe ;)
Expected and well deserved :-)
The song will be featured in the updated version of my overall top 100 btw.
Can’t wait …
yay!
Well deserved.
Nice to see Belgium getting its first Frida this year. It was indeed the most favourite song in the esc bubble “pre-contest-ly”. HUGE in EVERY single poll. Its fan favourite status helped it qualify from semis, especially the moment Blanche was very underwhelming in semi 1 and juries had her ONLY 13th…
In the Grand Final, however, she was almost 100% spot on! A very well deserved 4th place and EASILY the BEST internal selection this year (song-wise) !!!
Congratulations!
PS : Bulgaria not winning this, is a relief and will tone conspiracy theories down a bit
I just showed it to a friend of mine that’s so disconnected to the contest expecting him to say “good song” and since it was the live he said “wow she’s awful” :/ her 4th place televote wise is still a bit surprising after all, but the song’s great (my 2nd pre-contest, 4th post-contest)
Song is indeed GREAT though!
LOL, she doesn’t evoke mother henly feelings in everyone.
With such a shaky live and black hole of charisma as singer dressed in black matter, this really shouldn’t be even nominated no matter how good the studio version or the back drop are. ESC is live tv competition.
I agree 100% that Blanche was not great internal choice material. I don’t believe she proved uncharismatic though, she did manage to convey vulnerability which was a key point with this song. We may call it anti-charisma if you like but it was there.
As for the song, I agree it’s great but since it is widely known that it copies a little known french-canadian track released before the deadline, I also don’t see why people thought they should reward the internal choice made here.
She was scared, she was not conveying vulnerability. If she was, she would have been competing head to head with Salvador. In that sense I think she ruined her song and chances. I’m not against vulnerability, introverted persons can be very charismatic performers. She did it accidentally. Can’t really see her having any kind of career in pop music.
Indeed, it’s a clumsy copy and that’s why not worth this Frida either.
The best way to show vulnerability is to actually be scared out of your mind. Method acting :-P
well no, that’s not “method acting” as it’s not “acting” per se
Reality TV :-P
Ah, she was actually Marlon Brando of ESC!
I thought she was Blanche Dubois :-P
Hahhahaahaahaabloodyhaa!!!
Strangers surely were kind to her.
The song actually challenged me a bit. It’s not in a musical area that I listen to very much, and it has been going up and down in my rankings several times (always in the top 5 though). It is rather gloomy, and as you probably know, gloominess is usually not so much me. However it also contains a lot of mysticism which fascinated me a lot, and I think it is on a high artistic level.
Blanche is clearly not the best singer in the world – at least not from a technical point of view. But it is not always the most technically experienced singers that produce the most interesting vocal performances. She seemed uncertain at times, but the uncertainty was somehow very expressive. The whole music contains uncertainty (f.e. chords that sound like they don’t really know where to go), and it’s a theme in the lyrics as well: “Are we going to lose it all”.
Each time there’s a great cold electro song it takes you around three months to come around. In the end, we know you do come around (Aminata for instance).
True.
It’s now even part of the esc season lol
Always there to assist in questioning a cold electro song when needed ;-)
…and coming around!
electro is just out of your turf, it takes longer for you to give in
But it is not so that I don’t listen to music with electronic elements. I am a big admirer of Radiohead f.e.
And Björk, Portishead, Berlin-era Bowie, Pink Floyd etc.
all of your names are great artists, not just great electro artists though
But I still prefer ElectroFolk from the Latvian final that year.
We live in the world of constant amateur hour. Professionalism is out of fashion in so many ways. Blanche reflects that beautifully. She is every girl dragged to big stage, scared to death, yet she made it until the end without fainting or anything. No wonder televote loved her.
yeah, the Xfactor kind of story people love to suck up
Indeed, she is one of us, not them.
but the winner is neither, it’s “one out there”
That’s true. Nerdy chic as it’s best! Very current in that sense.
lol
I know a few French boys who can deepthroat like that!
Hmm I always thought that Mexican food isn’t actually THAT spicy (at least for me).
Personally the spiciest thing I have ever tried is Dijonnaise mustard :)
Ι really don’t like spicy food.
I do. But that mustard was way too much even for me :)
really?!
Yep. Maybe I got to put too much of it on my food :)
Nice, glad that Belgium won a Frida too. :) This was pretty hard to decide for me, I think I went with Bulgaria, but either of Azerbaijan, Belgium and Bulgaria would’ve been deserved winners. :)
The more I watch the Grand final performance of BEL 17, the more I like it!
Congrats, Blanche!
I agree ! And a total improvement from her semi performance!
Guess she was scared about not reaching the final, and that the qualification must have made her more relaxed.
Off-topic, during a radio interview former ESC commentator for turkish TV Bülent Özveren revealed that during the 100% jury system there was a deal for the turkish jury to exchange five points with the slovenian jury, because as he said the turkish audience was livid with the country’s string of bad placings in that period. He also revealed that even though there was a glimmer of hope for TRT to return two years ago, he now believes there isn’t the slightest chance for Turkey to come back to the contest.
☹️
Such a shame they are not returning. I would be happy to swap most of Big 5 with it. Shame I’m not the head of Reference Group.
I think Giorgos Katsaros has said something similar about a secret deal between Greece and Turkey back in 2001.
Another off-topic: 2010 ESC winner Lena surges on top of the german i-tunes chart after this live TV performance of her new song “If I wasn’t your daughter”, dedicated to the absentee father:
http://world.webclips.akamai.rtl.de/vod/videolounge09/59/555194_vsms_20170606_j67371_05_lena.mp4?_=4
*to her absentee father
Im almost sure she’s going to redo the contest and get at least top 5
Bold prediction :)
I am still in love with her. She will never be the best vocalist but she is such a fantastic live performer and knows how to use her vocal capabilities effectively.
Speaking of vocals, here is a very interesting video about the various vocal fails in this year’s Eurovision. Interestingly though, Blanche is missing…
Demy’s huge improvement in the final was obvious.Same with Jacques deciding to dodge some parts of his very demanding song.On Levina,she sounded like that in the German final too.Really strained vocals.Strange.
Thanks. I will check it after the main news. :)
very interesting (coming from a “twisted French” ah)! also nice that he DOES say Isaiah is a great vocalist, and imo he was really good EXCEPT for that one note (like Israel 2010)
Well this is fun video, but Isaih is far from great during the whole performance, both in the semi and in the final. He sounded strained and unclear at a lot of times, so not the best vocalist, but his voice is one of my favorites during this season. And why not add Romania to the list? Or Denmark for that matter, she sounded good at times, but she also clearly had trouble with the song or Blanche lol.
I understand his point of veiw with Alma, but it still came out pretty decent technically and sounded good overall, so I dont see that as a fail tbh.
it’s an amateur video you know, they just took examples of each kind of sloppery deliveries, from just “differences” between audio and live (france) to the big fail (spain)
Yeah I kinda get that, but I still have to share my veiws on the matter as I dont believe the person is correct in all his asumptions :P
It is also interesting how clearly the myth of “Jacques the great vocalist” is debunked here. He dodges the trickiest parts…
Yes he dodges it, but in a strategic and calculated way and it takes talent to make that decision and get through it without failing/singing off-key. So he is still a great vocalist overall and earned the nomination!
A national final with an exciting format for Germany next year.
Andreas Kümmert quitting?
Lol.Indeed.Their finals tend to have an exciting format most of the times,anyway.
Yeah and the audiences excited about do they fall asleep during the show or not.
Let’s hope the word “exciting” does not mean yet another convoluted concept as it did in previous years…
Germans have very specific definition of humor too 😃
Running scared … ♫♪♫
I voted for Kristian. My concept for best internal choice is different :P
so we’re back to awfulness? :p
Nahh…I just think they’re being attention seekers(to say it politely).
Reminder: no Fridas last week on Thursday, so the last 4 awards are coming Friday (overrated/underrated) and Saturday (top 5/ best entry)
The exit polls don’t bode well for Theresa May.
I still remember the 1992 exit polls when even hours after polls’ closing they were predicting a victory for Neil Kinnock’s Labour. John Major’s Tories won in the end.
Conservative vote is usually underestimated by both opinion polls and exit polls in th UK.
the polls in Uk are awful and a mess… in France they predicted 2012 and 2017 both rounds perfectly (sine the 2002 huge failure at seeing Le Pen Q, they took real mathematics and socio-economics scientifics to help them create true hardware for their stats)
True. Spain and Italy are another case were exit polls have a bad record.
In general, I think that the vote for conservative/right-wing parties are usually underestimated.
That’s true but either of the 2 choices they have is rather bad,imo so i wish them good luck.
I’m totally fine with one of the two choices they had ;)
Yes,i knew you would. :)
I am just reading in the Guardian that all UK exit polls after 2000 were very accurate.
I remember 2015 they said hung parliament and Tories had a bigger margin than before and could get rid of the LibDems to govern alone
Yes but they did predict that the tories were up and “close” to a majority then.
Actually I’m reading the same article right now :)
calm after the storm, it seems to me this time polls got it pretty much right….thankfully IMHO :-)
It seems so. How are you doing, Paul? :)
am doing fine thanks kind of pissed off re UK election vote that Teresa has to cosy up to DUP (Northern Ireland ultra nationalist, homophobic, anti abortion etc party) apart from that… :-)
Off Topic… God deciding my plan A for ETSC is hard. I love two choices (with plenty of backup, but still, two choices I love), but… deciding which one is best is toooooooooough.
it’s really strange here re posts, that suddenly nobody bothers to post? am guessing is to do with their own reason/public profile re posting stuff, whatever the reason personally don’t care, but as political stuff has been mentioned above even thanks to our dear moderator, would like to say thanks Jeremy! :-)
well just to say here, thanks dearest Shevek, that I saw your post via Catalan version of Amor pel dois, he wasn’t the best singer IM0 to represent the song in Catalan, but it was nice to hear a Catalan lyric version of Salvador’s song
You’re welcome.
Understandable.