BoNF 2016

Best of National Finals 2016

2016′s edition is the twelveth BoNF, a contest that survived 11 editions between 2005 and 2015! A retro 70s logo with a blue ribbon to mark “BoNF 2016” on it was chosen. The contest is being held during the spring of 2016, in April, as explained in the rules here. It’s the last to date but definitely not going to be the last ever as I have, since 2013, become a full administrator on ET helping me make BoNF more noticed. For the 2013 edition, a few of my closed friends on ET got to follow each step of the way, even helping me select the original top 30 songs; it was repeated in 2014 and exploded bigger than ever in 2015, so a big thanks to Dennis, Ivan, Niclas, Nick, Marc, Luke, Patrick! 2016 will follow the same footsteps hopefully! And also a big thanks to my usual ET friends who have been commenting the songs along the year with me, and disagreed a lot with me, Lynn, Toggie, Shevek, Oxi, Dimitris, Donnie, Dino, Lynn,  Anders, Guitar, Max… ad the most recent people who joined, thanks to ETSC, like Gregor, Rosalina, Ren…

2016 is the third time after the last two years for which I write this before the contest is over. I can’t yet discuss results or patterns except for the origin of songs. The contest hasn’t seen much shift geographically, even if the Nordics have declined lately and Estonia and Ukraine are left with the most representation. Together they make for a third of the semifinalists! While Ukraine already had a song or two in a semi before, their amazing NF (one of the two best with Eesti Laul) assures them almot certainly their first finalist ever in BoNF! Georgia makes its first appearance in the semifinal and Czech Republic returns to BoNF semi after having two songs in the final in a row in 2007 and 2008. Croatia’s return is maked by its presence in the semi as well. Italy’s internally chosen song misses for the second time in a row since the country’s return in 2011 after making it to the actual BoNF final for 4 years in a row. Germany has dropped a lot while Finland continues with poor UMK editions but yet secured one song in the semi. Latvia and even Lithuania have been better than they’ve been in a long time and both made it to the semi for the second year in a row. As usual, there were a few songs I hesitated with, so sorry to Jamie-Lee Kriewitz (Germany), Sigríður Eir & Jóhanna Vala (Iceland), Mimi Werner (Sweden), Fehérvári Gábor Alfréd (Hungary), Samra Rahlimi (Azerbaijan), Sophia Nohr (Denmark) and Elly V (Austria) who were just outside my top 30.

Another interesting element, 9 semifinalists are esc entries and a 10th one (Georgia’s) is performed by the esc artist anyway. So a third! Probably a record! Does it show a better esc or a rather underwhelming esc season? Sadly I reckon the later.

I continued to work harder on getting a good logo, personalized pics for the finalists and for the fourth time I will try posting all individual videos of the finalists on youtube (Germany now being an almost certain country in the final makes it hard since they’re extremely protective of their online material). 43 countries will take part in the 2016 Eurovisiong Song Contest but I am not couting Australia in BoNF, though Dani would have been a sure semifinalist as it’s in my personal top 10 for this year’s contest, so we’re counting 42 for BoNF. 25 of them used some sort of national finals (just like last year) in which 373 songs  were performed, which is 4 less than last year but still far from the late naughties figures, with a peak at 650 songs in 2009. I wrote down a list of 75 songs I liked and then came up with this top 30:

Austria | Zoë Straub, Loin d’ici
Belarus | Navi, Geta zyamlya
Croatia | Nina Kraljić, Lighthouse
Czech Republic | Gabriela Guncikova, I stand
Estonia | Go Away Bird, Sally
Estonia | Jüri Pootsmann, Play
Estonia | Mick Pedaja, Seis
Estonia | Púr Múdd, Meet halfway
Estonia | Würffel, I’m facing north
Finland | Stella Christine, Ain’t got time for boys
Georgia | Young Georgian Lolitaz, We agree
Germany | Keøma, Protected
Hungary | Mushu, Uncle Tom
Iceland | Elísabet Ormslev, Á ný
Latvia | Justs Sirmais, Heartbeat
Lithuania | Petunija, Tomorrow
Montenegro | Highway, The real thing
Netherlands | Douwe Bob, Slow down
Norway | Laila Samuels, Afterglow
Norway | The Hungry Hearts, Laika
Serbia | Sanja Vučić, Goodbye
Sweden | Boris René, Put your love on me
Sweden | Frans, If I were sorry
Sweden | Oscar Zia, Human
Sweden | Wictoria, Save me
Ukraine | Jamala, 1944
Ukraine | Pur:Pur, We do change
Ukraine | Sunsay, Love manifest
Ukraine | Svetlana Tarabarova, Nikoli znovu
Ukraine | The Hardkiss, Helpless

Semifinal

My friends recieved the mp3 of these 30 songs and they have graded each of them with a 1 (awful) through 5 (great) system. You can also download all 30 songs on this page! For theeighth year, I saved the full results of the semifinal. And so we have from 30th to 16th:

30 Finland | Stella Christine, Aint got time for boys (22pts)
29 Serbia | Sanja Vučić, Goodbye (24pts)
28 Sweden | Oscar Zia, Human (26pts)
27 Austria | Zoë Straub, Loin d’ici (27pts)
26 Ukraine | Sunsay, Love manifest (28pts)
25 Estonia | Go Away Bird, Sally (29pts)
24 Germany | Keøma, Protected (29pts)
23  Ukraine | Pur:Pur, We do change (30pts)
22 Belarus | Navi, Geta zyamlya (31pts)
21 Montenegro | Highway, The real thing (31pts)
20 Estonia | Würffel, I’m facing north (32pts)
19  Netherlands | Douwe Bob, Slow down (32pts)
18  Lithuania | Petunija, Tomorrow (33pts)
17  Iceland | Elísabet Ormslev, Á ný (36pts)
16 Norway | The Hungry Hearts, Laika (36pts)

Finalists scored: 37, 37, 37, 37, 38, 40, 40, 42, 43, 47, 48, 48, 50, 50, 50. Last year, no 50points, this year three! And a real gap between the top 6 and the rest: four songs at 37pts, one song at 38 barely making it! Sadly two songs at 36 are out for only 1pt!

Final

So now I had all 15 finalists! As usual by now, I also managed to get the songwriter and the composer down for each of them. A quick analysis first: as usual in BoNF, a lot of them are self penned which is good as 10 of the performing artists wrote their own songs, and that includes female song writers as Svetlana, Jamala, Yulia Sanina (from Hardkiss), Laila Samuels all wrote their songs too! And of course Aminata, Latvian representative in Eurovision 2015 and a BoNF finalist, is back as a composer as well! Actually, Estonia’s Stig and Latvia’s Aminata are both back, both in esc and in BoNF! As for vocals, females don’t win this year… after last year insane record (12.5 entries were sung by females)! But it’s very close, 8 male vocals, 7 female vocals! Native languages have dramatically sunk, probably related to the heavy electro turn for BoNF lately, but also because in general NF use less and less national languages, and in Eurovision it’s even now out of the ordinary to hear a national language… The two songs that barely miss from Iceland and Norway were not sung in English but failed to qualify. So we now have Russian and Tatar in two of the Ukrainian entries and one song in Estonian, which is the only song in 100% national language! After 2014’s debut entries for Netherlands and Armenia, this year sees two countries joining the BoNF final family: Georgia and Ukraine! Ukraine reigned supreme and with 5 songs in the semifinal, they secure 3 songs in the final! And Georgia qualified after hosting one of those rare but often successful NF with only one artist having different songs to chose from: usually, as it was the case for Israel in the late 2000’s, this means the best song gets to BoNF and another song is sent to the contest! Estonia and Sweden confirm their supremacy on the contest as they too get three songs in the final, as much as Ukraine! Together these three countries get 9 out of 15 finalists… All other 6 entries come from 6 different countries who are quite the BoNF favorites (Latvia, Norway) or countries which are no surprises (Hungary, Czech Republic and Croatia are all getting their 3rd time in the final this year). Yes the contest is very nordic, with 4 baltic entries and 4 nordic songs from 4 different countries! But more shocking, BoNF 2016 is very… central and eastern european! No country west of Czech Republic qualified this year!

Now, I used a computer “random playlist” to get the running order for the final. I will upload them all individually on youtube, so you’ll be able to just click on the song titles to watch each song and I also made a playlist which you can watch on BoNF’s youtube page.

 01
Ukraine
Svetlana Tarabarova
Nikoli znovu
(Svetlana Tarabarova)

 

 

 

 

 

02
Sweden
Boris René
Put your love on me
(Boris René, Tobias Lundgren & Tim Larsson)

 

 

 

 

 

03
Norway
Laila Samuels
Afterglow
(Laila Samuelsen, The Beatgees & Jan Weigel)

 

 

 

 

 

04
Estonia
Jüri Pootsmann
Play
(Stig Rästa, Vallo Kikas & Fred Krieger)

 

 

 

 

 

05
Estonia
Púr Múdd
Meet halfway
(Oliver Rõõmus & Joonas Alvre)

 

 

 

 

 

06
Sweden
Wictoria
Save me
(Jens Siverstedt, Lauren Dyson & Jonas Wallin)

 

 

 

 

 

07
Georgia
Young Georgian Lolitaz
We agree
(Nika Kocharov & Vazha Marr)

 

 

 

 

 

08
Estonia
Mick Pedaja
Seis
(Mick Pedaja)

 

 

 

 

 

09
Hungary
Mushu
Uncle Tom
(Izsák Palmer, Örs Kozák & Antal Kert)

 

 

 

 

 

10
Croatia
Nina Kraljić
Lighthouse
(Andreas Grass & Nikola Paryla)

 

 

 

 

 

11
Ukraine
Jamala
1944
(Jamala)

 

 

 

 

 

12
Ukraine
The Hardkiss
Helpless
(Yulia Sanina & Valeriy “Val” Bebko)

 

 

 

 

 

13
Czech republic
Gabriela Gunčíková
I stand
(Christian Schneider, Aidan O’Connor & Sara Biglert)

 

 

 

 

 

14
Latvia
Justs Sirmais
Heartbeat
(Aminata Savadogo)

 

 

 

 

 

15
Sweden
Frans
If I were sorry
(Frans Jeppsson Wall, Fredrik Andersson, Michael Saxell & Oscar Fogelström)

 

 

 

 

Results

Vote 1 ; Vote 2 ; Vote 3 ; Vote 4 ; Vote 5 ; Vote 6 ; Vote 7 ; Vote 8 ; Vote 9 ; Vote 10

FULL RESULTS