Eurovision 2021 – Tonight we finally saw the second semifinal, with 17 entries participating and 20 countries voting all together chose the 10 finalists! Find out which they are! Comment, discuss and analyze with us!
The hosts were Chantal Janzen, Jan Smit, Edsilia Rombley and Nikkie de Jager (NikkieTutorials) and the show took place in Rotterdam Ahoy in the Netherlands. This was tonight’s line-up:
- 🇸🇲 San Marino / Senhit – Adrenalina
- 🇪🇪 Estonia / Uku Suviste – The Lucky One
- 🇨🇿 Czech Republic / Benny Cristo – omaga
- 🇬🇷 Greece / Stefania – Last Dance
- 🇦🇹 Austria / Vincent Bueno – Amen
- 🇵🇱 Poland / RAFAŁ – The Ride
- 🇲🇩 Moldova / Natalia Gordienko – SUGAR
- 🇮🇸 Iceland / Da∂i Freyr og Gagnamagni∂ – 10 Years
- 🇷🇸 Serbia / Hurricane – Loco Loco
- 🇬🇪 Georgia / Tornike Kipiani – You
- 🇦🇱 Albania / Anxhela Peristeri – Karma
- 🇵🇹 Portugal / The Black Mamba – Love Is On My Side
- 🇧🇬 Bulgaria / Victoria – Growing Up is Getting Old
- 🇫🇮 Finland / Blind Channel – Dark Side
- 🇱🇻 Latvia / Samanta Tīna – The Moon is Rising
- 🇨🇭 Switzerland / Gjon’s Tears – Tout l’Univers
- 🇩🇰 Denmark / Fyr og Flamme – Øve Os På Hinanden
The Interval Act was performed by Ahmad Joudeh and Dez Maarsen. France, Spain and the United-Kingdom also voted in this semi-final.
The ten countries that qualified were finally announced:
- Albania
- Serbia
- Bulgaria
- Moldova
- Portugal
- Iceland
- San Marino
- Switzerland
- Greece
- Finland
The Eurovision Times 
Is Radio International the site that provides ESC Radio?
Sadly, Natalia doesn’t get to join Eden’s record-setter club, as Paula Seling’s 2014 note was 18.2 seconds (and Lindita’s was 17.9). But she’s on the podium!
What is going on, our views are stuck on yt, at 474 000 for some time already, grrrr! Not fair at all.. :( :/
That’s a good sign, it means the volume of views is so high Youtube is activating its safety procedures and verifying they are all legitimate before adding them. Assuming they are legitimate of course, which I believe they are.
Imagine Iceland winning. There will be NO winner to give the trophy away and NO winner to receive it lol
LOL. Thought about Iceland, but it hadn’t occured to me that Duncan would be giving it away. (What a year without ESC does to your brain :( ) I wish them all a speedy recovery and that the virus doesn’t spread itself to yet more delegations.
Well Duncan Lawrence won’t be there to hand it over as he has Covid according to the BBC
Thanks captain obvious
Charming as ever I see
If you read my initial comment you will see this is exactly what I said.
I will be so sad if Malta wins jury of 2021 in the final, not to mention the whole thing.. :(
It seems I really can’t that swing stuff.. :/
If Malta wins the jury vote, it will be the final proof that ”ESC jury vote” is the shortest joke in the world.
You’re against Malta now too? What happened to you! :P
Now? I was against it from the day 1. Actually the only one round here back then :-)
As for now:
1. Italy
2. Ukraine
3. Lithuania
4. Switzerland
5. Norway
Oh dear…
I’ll see you in Kiev then!
Don’t think it will be Kiev :-)
LIT seems completely lost and forgotten unfortunately… of course they were not helped by going first and poor staging, which made them disappear on what looked like a Moscow or Düsseldorf-size stage.
It was weirdly estranging affair. I still love the song.
Same here – I think it may seem too cold/distant to some people. I don’t understand at all why some people classify it like ICE or even as a joke entry.
She still reminds me of JESC TBH, this entry gave me JESC vibes on Tuesday.. :(
:-)
Wanna come to my ESC party?
Thanks, but I’ll stick with my own!
Are you cooking anything?
Probably not as I feel a bit lazy on that front at the moment. I think selection of Italian cold cuts – salamis, parma ham, bresaola, -, cheeses, olives, fruits, sweets and bread have to do.
Malta’s been showered with jury love for even worse songs – I don’t believe it’ll win either jury or televote; not a popular genre and the staging is borderline grotesque.
It’s flirting with grotesque very heavily!
It plays to the public (she has appeared in UK got talent, junior ESC, etc,) and juries too, so overall recipe for a win!
That is a disgusting comment imo. Sorry!
Not mine I hope!
No, not yours. The body shaming comment re. Destiny.
Disgusting? Oh please imo. Maybe just take care of your own comments and commenting? Or perhaps do a classic Toggie style nocturnal character assassination. It’s been awhile.
ROFL
What part of that was body shaming? I thought you had masters in English or something. LOL
OK you know I only focus on certain comments these days, as limited commentator, know there are people here who have called me all sorts of names/ various comments in the past ! is why am here just now and again, to focus on people who count like u, rest can go to hell, in the end it’s just an ESC blog, talking about a yearly event, let’s get real folks
Believe me, poor Destiny has been called worse names than you have ever been called. Plus, you are middle-aged man who can take a hit. Destiny is an 18 year old girl. Those comments are disgraceful!
I guess just getting upset about Malta’s own ESC entry and fashion design, is a sign you need to find another hobby/ outside interest?! , keep your own sanity..
It crossed the line at first rehearsal with the pink stripey thing she wore then. This is less bad but makes her look at least twice her age.
It’s really bad.
Plain black or white dress, loose cut, wind machine – how hard is it?
Not hard at all :-)
Then again Malta often has styling problems – they may be close to Italy but far from Milan.
ROFL All roads lead to Rome, but very few to Milan, thetas for sure!
I believe Malta will win by default
I still stick to what I have said from day 1: France!
Would love France to win, but in the end I see a top 10 result, my parents and in laws voted it 9th overall, not a good sign!
Let’s wait and see. Did you show them the video clip or the live performance?
The actual Queen of the Netherlands, HM Queen Maxima has done a LookLab with NikkiTutorials!!!
Not that the UK will get to host any time soon, but don’t expect to see Queen Elizabeth, or King Charles, or King William, (surely not King George) if we do.
The closest you’ll get is ME aghan Markle complaining that all these countries were awarding points to each other but no jury spokesperson announced 12 points for ME aghan
You’re a royalist, right?
Not particularly, no, but you have to admit getting an interview with the queen of a country is a pretty big deal, not something you quietly put onto youtube when no ones looking.
You interviewed a queen of a country u mean?
And it’s on YouTube?!
No NikkiTutorials, one of the hosts, did! Its on the official Eurovision youtube channel now
Ok that kind of queen
Queen Maxim, the actual Queen, her royal highness of the Netherlands. Not a drag queen, the actual queen.
The “Exclusively revealing the Running Order…” link on the official site is killing me ahah
also looks like we already know most Frida winners already! Reminder: Norway, Netherlands, Belgium, Italy, France and Ukraine are the very far Top 6 in Fridas history. Looks like most of them will take home more Fridas this year :p
” The press conferences are done…
…now we’re just waiting for the final confirmation of the running order for Saturday night. We’ll share as soon as we know, so don’t go away!”
It also says they expect to end the live blog at 2:30-sih CEST :p
And now the (not so long hopefully) wait begins…
Thoughts on tonight:
– Out of the big 3 of ISL/SUI/BUL, Iceland was the winner tonight. Although you could tell the lack of live, this connected much better with the audience there than I thought and it was in a great position in the running order. The overall performance was excellent and I think this won the SF tonight as the best jury-TV combo entry. I don’t think this can win though at this point, but it will be a Top 10 finisher.
– Biggest mover for me tonight was Portugal. My friends had this comfortably with Iceland and San Marino in their Top 3. In fact, I thought this was clearly better than BUL/SUI live tonight. The 1st minute here is incredible, and there is something quite magical with the lead singer’s voice here. It’s an entry that’s grown on me and the staging has really elevated this. I’ve now put a bet on this to be Top 10.
– Bulgaria was nice but didn’t totally strike me as the “magical” live that it was being hyped up. I also thought Victoria seemed too emotional during the performance tonight. The moment where she looks at the photo with her Dad is not captured right on the camera angle and ruins the USP here I think. Switzerland is outstanding vocally but way too avant-garde of a performance and like we knew, his movements do not help. Neither of these two can win imo.
– San Marino was a good show opener. The bit when Flo Rida comes in is actually really good…they weirdly have good chemistry. The biggest trends of the night in Ireland were Flo Rida, San Marino, Iceland, and Finland. Greece as an overall package was alright but it seems like they’ve given Stefania too much to do both staging-wise and vocally, and it falls somewhat flat. Serbia does very well in the genre and has bucket loads of energy, charisma, and professionalism. Serbia could finish best Balkan on Saturday. Finland had an excellent performance, especially in the running order spot they were given – now that it’s drawn 2nd half, I think it goes early in the 2nd half to stay away for Italy, but the concern is starting to be there in that it may draw enough televotes away from Italy to prevent their win.
– I thought Albania was going to Q right after the performance. Great staging (SJB’s best of the year lol), Anxhela was oozing confidence and vocals were on point. 3 qualifications in a row in Albanian is fairly great.
– The only surprise of the night was Moldova over Denmark. I think the susp jury votes definitely pulled that through cause Denmark looked great to me.. Austria did pretty terrible with the televote I feel.
I have just watched some YT reactions to SF 2 and everyone goes either WTF or ROFL when Moldova is announced …
This is how I rank in the final now:
1. Ukraine
2. Russia
3. Sweden
4. Italy
5. Portugal
6. Belgium :O really jumped a lot on my list
7. Switzerland
8. France
9. Spain
10. Norway
11. Bulgaria
12. Serbia
13. The Netherlands
14. Iceland
15. The UK
16. Moldova
17. Malta :/ only for vocals
18. Cyprus :( studio version is much higher
19. Israel
20. Greece
21. Finland
22. Albania :( she alone on the stage for this song, that horrible cliche esc dress and that awful makeup duuuh.. :/
23. Azerbaijan
24. San Marino
25. Germany
26. Lithuania
They’ve given Switzerland, the winning (first half) #11 spot.
Cyprus opens the show. Hmm
Cyprus will open the final
San Marino to close the final (expected)
San Marino to close it.
Italy in 24?
Yes. Great spots for the top-two in the odds,Italy and France.
And UKR buried as expected.
Between two popular songs. They did tried to help France and Italy shine in this line-up.
Spain at 12 is a bit of a shocker – not that I think that will help its chances.
13th but yeah.
He always seems like he’d be a totally unbearable drama queen if you met him – plus it’s such typical Spanish radio stuff.
Oh what were your thoughts on Blas saying he always watched ESC with his grandmother and she died of Corona? I think it was a bit much and didn’t seem altogether genuine.
but he did say it was about her when he revealed both entries competing in the NF, pushing “Voy a quedarme” above the other one in that NF (making Spanish fans mad as in general they liked the other one more, but the general audience got the last say I reckon).
I’m sure he really connects with the song deepluy because of his loss but he has said it a number of times during interviews so there was no need to repeat it during the semi. It felt rehearsed and that he was just reaching out to the big live audience.
Yes that was my thought, too; he said it in a very routine way.
It’s most probable that Ukraine is much more popular than Lithuania at the moment. I think pairing Ukraine with France helps both. Makes them really shine. Also Lithuania-Ukraine-France is pretty impressive flow. People should be much more worried about what happens to Bulgaria after Finland :-)
Cyprus
Albania
Israel
Belgium
Russia
Malta
Portugal
Serbia
United Kingdom
Greece
Switzerland
Iceland
Spain
Malta sixth? They must have not done so well like top-two.
They really haven’t done well. Pushing is over.
I check the 2019 semi results and the running order. Russia that was placed 5th in the running was a mere 6th place in the semi. Of course it being Russia was pushed to third overall in the final.
Glad you checked it, as I vaguely remembered it being something like that. It’s not a spot for contender, that’s for sure.
Moldova
Germany
Finland
Bulgaria
Lithuania
Ukraine
France
Azerbaijan
Norway
The Netherlands
Italy
Sweden
San Marino
And yes it is! I thought it’d go last of the rock/edgier numbers – would have put sth between NL and ITA tho; it’s literally going from 0 to 200 km/h back to back. Having the bland Swedish song next can only help though.
I read this that there is big chance of Sweden dropping out of top 10 and this is a big push to keep them above the waterline.
I think they’ve kind of buried it between ITA and SMR; it’s one of those songs that I forget while I hear it. I’d say its televoting potential is similar to UK.
Plausible and that’s one way to read this, but basically we are talking about same thing but for different reason :-)
Well obviously then my reason is the right one!!!!!
I’m very sceptical with EBU and juries at the moment, but ok. You were right.
As always. I see myself as the conscience and fountain of wisdom of this and many other blogs /s.
I can see why!
I knew you would; you’re disgracefully smart a lot of the time!
First half
Cyprus
Albania
Israel
Belgium
Russia
Malta
Portugal
Serbia
United Kingdom
Greece
Switzerland
Iceland
Spain
Spain gets the pimp spot ? Ok.
I like that. :)
I think Greece 19 shows that it isn’t necessarily a pimp slot
France number 20
My initial hunch of Cyprus opening was right. A solid pop song that appeals to all to set the tone
oh my gosh they put Germany and Finland back to back the middle finger story is alive lol
After Cyprus and Norway, it’s proof the Dutch got a sense of humor
As with the first semi, the majority of songs were a big no-no for me. There are however a few songs I did like. I’m sad to see Georgia miss the final. It is a sympathetic entry: No circus. He was just singing a song, and one he had written himself. This I appreciate.
You can probably guess what my favourite was.
Portugal?
Yep :)
Good choice; positive surprise of the night for me (among many horrors).
(San Marino and Moldova f.e. – just terrible)
Moldova is the worst out of all qualifiers imo.
On the other hand, I support San Marino because it is a microstate. And there are several qualifiers like AZE f. e. that are just as bad imo.
There’s an awful lot of shake-shake songs with women with not very much clothes on…
Especially from SF 1. That was awful, except for Russia, Ukraine, Belgium and Lithuania ( a bit lame though) imo.
I don’t like Lithuania. At all.
Just like my dad. :)
I like San AMrino but agree on Moldovan performancwe; atrocious – Poland was another car crash.
It was all about Bulgaria and Switzerland tonight IMO ♥️ I expected you to like Portugal. Good live, very mediocre song IMO.
I really like the blues elements of it :)
My mother had Georgia 1st and Portugal 3rd. :)
I had Portugal 3rd and Georgia 4th.
What’s your favourite then? Switzerland?
Good gracious no! Switzerland is my 27th place atm. In semi-final 2 I had BGR 1st and ISL 2nd. Overall I am rooting for France and Ukraine. :)
I like Iceland. It’s a bit quirky. Bulgaria is OK.
What do you think of Ukraine and France?
Ukraine is great, but then I’ve always favoured folk music traditions.
Fance: I’m a bit unsure actually. I like that we get to hear this kind of music again, but as a song I find it a bit anonymous. I was however impressed by the snippet of the live performance I got to hear before the results, so potentially it will work better for me live.
Believe me, France only works live. If I only knew the video clip, I wouldn’t have payed attention.
Good to know. I had only watched the video.
Then you better prepare yourself for a totally different experience on Saturday. :)
it wasn’t the big big favorite going in the French NF, but it was still considered “the best song”, however, when she performed she stormed everyone away, it won massively the French NF, both sets of juries and televote, and never left bookies Top 4 since then! It’s all down to her performance indeed! So I have my fingers cross France can get its first Top 5 since 2002 :)
Judging by the snippet I think there is a realistic chance.
For the UK it will be another bottom five for sure.
I hope Barbara wins you over this Saturday :)
We shall see :)
Provided of course that I will actually be able to watch the final. At the moment I don’t know my work times for Saturday, and it could potentially be in the evening.
Poltava or Chernigov? :P
Famous battelfield or sacral middle age UNESCO sites? :P
Mailand oder Madrid. Hauptsache Italien (Milan or Madrid, as long as it is Italy), as a famous German footballer once said. :)
Albania #2 for two in a row?
https://eurovisiontimes.wordpress.com/2021/05/21/eurovision-2021-running-order-of-the-final-revealed/
the love for Sweden never dies… also Albania, expected as #2, but that’s twice in a row now the delegation can be pissed!
I honestly don’t see being smushed between Italy and San Marino as particularly favorable for Sweden, even if the entries are quite different
Yeah I think SWE will be crushed between those two distinct and high energy numbers… this really is the weakest Swedish song in ages; still can’t believe they didn’t go #hard4Saade.
I also think Norway appearing a few slots earlier will take more votes. It’s a stronger take wiithin that same genre (though neither of the two entries appeal to me).
While I wholeheartedly supported Clara Klingenström in MF because it was heartfelt, genuine and something different to what we usually send, Saade probably would have been our best bet for a top 10 placement.
Yes they had weird staging and styling for Saade but the song had something hypnotic. I also really liked Paul Rey but realize he likely wouldn’t have done well.
Saade was my runner-up. That melody and beat were great. My friends who I was watching MF with also said the song would’ve been better with a different singer
It would have been most contemporary pop song in the line up, easy top 10 among this ESC bop tsunami.
Also a bop brought by a male singer, making it stand out even more. Most bops this year are sung by women
They are, and they are quite bland over all.
That being said, I can’t recall a single one of my friends liking Saade. They say his voice is too nasal (which I can agree with) and that his looks are his only reason for being famous.
THe nasal thing makes his voice stand out though – there’s a lot of good voices (not Natalia tho lol) but few that are unique and memorable; his is. His looks don’t hurt but I think it’s more than that, he’s charismatic. I could see him do a Carola and coem back and win one day.
Agree about his charisma. I don’t dislike him the same way that my friends seem to do :)
I wasnt big on “every minute” as I was with “Manboy” or “Popular” but did like it more than the awful “Sting”. Loved the concept of the staging, but not the execution (sloppy) and Saade has a very annoying nasal voice and can’t really hold a tune. It wasn’t in my top 5 of MF 2021 but I think his entry would have done great with the juries, better than what Tusse will do!
Actually it’s a pretty bad slot for Sweden in the Final as it was in semi. The Dutch are no fan of Swedish entry it seems :)
No, they did put Malta in bad place too. LOL
Yes, Greece for example got a much better slot (for being Dutch that is)
How did you like it?
Greece? Overall good impression but I have to rewatch everything thoroughly as there was enough noise during our party
I think it looked a bit too much like video most of the time and don’t think the wow effect(s) weren’t really that wow. I’m glad that everything worked well technically. I still do bet that most of the viewers thought that the invisible dancers were on the video.
Makes sense.
It looked weird, you werent sure the guys in white were there at first (they look like they’re in the video) and returning to her on stage midway is weird as well… And anyway the whole never seen before is weird, as it’s literally Russia 2016 all over, except technology moved on a little since then
Also Russia was much more striking in its super cool black and white modernism.
Stefania is adorable and I like her super!rl in disco mood styling :-)
And she was very good vocally !
Yes she was!
Albania #2 for the second year in a row. Come on………
Two supposed favorites Switzerland and Iceland perform back to back while the two of the big five in the first half get good spots.