BoNF 2022

Best of National Finals 2022

2022′s edition is the 18th BoNF, a contest that survived 17 editions between 2005 and 2021 and, most importantly, the COVID cancellation of Eurovision 2020!

2022 is the fourth time in a row for which I write this after the contest is over. I used to be better at keeping things up to date and used to post it as soon as it was over, and more importantly before the actual contest was held in order to get some idea of what the results might be. But I had a very busy end of the year, so I take some free time during the ETSC season to post this article. Moreover, this is posted a bit late because esc 2022 was a bit underwhelming, but then 2021 was historical (the revival of the contest turned out a great success, as Rotterdam had two years to practice, keeping what was a good idea and updating what needed to do better; delegations also had more time to think over, and some kept their artists while others made the smart move to change) and one of the best contests ever, definitely the best this century and the best of the modern era (since 1998, with the language rule and orchestra abolished and televote introduced). So 2022 was pale in comparison, boring or bad NF with often bad results. Once more a very few NF made it all worth while (Portugal, France, Slovenia, Serbia and a very new Spanish NF).

I still continued to work harder on getting a good logo, personalized pics for the finalists but I won’t be posting all individual videos of the finalists on youtube because of the site new policies. Now I just create a playlist that features all 15 lives, often posted by the broadcasters themselves. 40 countries took part in the 2022 Eurovisiong Song Contest (Armenia and Montenegro returning but Russian broadcasters spread the regime’s propaganda and were banned from the contest) but I am not couting Australia in BoNF, so we’re counting 39 for BoNF (it was a record 43 countries in esc 2018). 26 of them used some sort of national finals (17 only in 2021, 23 in 2020, 25 in 2019, 29 in 2018, 24 in 2017) in which 430 songs were performed (377 in 2015, 373 in 2016, 380 in 2017, 516 in 2018, 424 in 2019, 375 in 2020, 250 in 2021) still far from the late noughties figures, with a peak at 650 songs in 2009. I wrote down a list of 100 songs I liked and then came up with this top 30:

Belgium | Jérémie Makiese, Miss you
Croatia | Elis Lovrić, No war
Croatia | Marko Bošnjak, Moli za nas
Finland | Isaac Sene, Kuuma jäbä
Finland | Bess, Ram pam pam
Finland | Olivera, Thank God I’m an atheist
France | Marius Niollet, Les chansons d’amour
France | Alvan & Ahez, Fulenn
France | Pauline Chagne, Nuit Pauline
Iceland | Markéta Irglová, Mögulegt
Iceland | Katla, Þaðan af
Italy | Sangiovanni, Farfalle
Italy | Matteo Romano, Virale
Italy | La Rappresentante di Lista, Ciao ciao
Italy | Highsnob & Hu, Abbi cura di te
Lithuania | Lolita Zero, Not your mother
Lithuania | Monika Liu, Sentimentai
Netherlands | S10, De diepte
Norway | Elsie Bay, Death of us
Poland | Karolina Lizer, Czysta woda
Poland | Kuba Szmajkowski, Lovesick
Portugal | Maro, Saudade, saudade
Portugal | Pongo & Tristany, Dégra.dê
San Marino | Achille Lauro, Stripper
Serbia | Sara Jo, Muškarčina
Serbia | Konstrakta, In corpore sano
Slovenia | Luma, All in
Spain | Rayden, Calle de la llorería
Spain | Rigoberta Bandini, Ay mama
Sweden | Cornelia Jakobs, Hold me closer

Semifinal

My friends did not get the mp3 anymore and instead, I made a Deezer playlist. The jury graded each songs with a 1 (awful) through 5 (great) system. For the 13th year, I saved the full results of the semifinal. And so we have from 30th to 16th:

30 Belgium | Jérémie Makiese, Miss you (27pts)
29 Spain | Rayden, Calle de la llorería (28pts)
28 Poland | Karolina Lizer, Czysta woda (28pts)
27 Poland | Kuba Szmajkowski, Lovesick (29pts)
26 Iceland | Markéta Irglová, Mögulegt (30pts)
25  Netherlands | S10, De diepte (31pts)
24  Italy | Sangiovanni, Farfalle (31pts)
23  San Marino | Achille Lauro, Stripper (32pts)
22 Iceland | Katla, Þaðan af (33pts)
21 Croatia | Elis Lovrić, No war (34pts)
20 Finland Finland | Isaac Sene, Kuuma jäbä (34pts)
19 Slovenia | Luma, All in (34pts)
18 Norway | Elsie Bay, Death of us (35pts)
17 Finland Finland | Bess, Ram pam pam (38pts)
16 Italy | Matteo Romano, Virale (38pts)

Finalists scored: 38, 39, 39, 42, 44, 44, 44, 44, 45, 46, 46, 46, 46, 47, 49 This is one of the best results ever for BoNF semis! No songs got lower than 25 meaning that each entry was ranked higher than average! It’s interesting in a year that’s considered poor by esc fans! The NF season was still strong, regardless of the picked entries in the end. Also noteworthy, there were three songs that tied at 38pts for only one remaining place in the Top 15, so sadly two songs had to miss even though they came very close!

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: in 2018 we broke the record of 11 of the performing artists who had written their own songs, and again in 2019 with 12! We oficially broke all records at 15/15 last year, though we only got one single song written by just one person, so it’s easy to add the performing artist in the writing team, at least for lyrics. We’re at 12/15 again this year, but only Monika Liu wrote her song all by herself!

While a good number of 2021 acts were BoNF returnees, for the simple fact that Eurovision 2021 featured mostly 2020 acts that were selected internally again, or at least participated in their national finals at home. On the other hand, 2022 featured mostly new comers: the 2022 BoNF final might be one of rare ones with no returnees at all from BoNF past finals (well besides the first few ones). And in general, most of the finalists were performing in their home NF for the first time anyway so they werent even selected in BoNF at all before!

Native languages have resisted very well in BoNF, and this year is no different with almost all songs (12/15) in native languages. Of course, French, Italian or Portuguese are expected to be heard as these countries have strong traditions with singing in native languages. But surprisingly, we also got Breton, Lithuanian, Serbian, Croatian and for the first time Spanish! Only 3 entries were in English, mostly from Nordic countries (Sweden, Finland and Lithuania).

After 2014’s debut entries for Netherlands and Armenia, 2016’s debut entry of Georgia, 2017’s debut entries of Azerbaijan and Portugal (1s and 2nd respectively), 2020’s debut entry of Belarus, it’s Spain’s turn to be welcomed to the BoNF family, thanks to a strong and interesting new NF, with all the crazyness Spain has got us used to by now, but very different songs and some that were hits at home! 2 songs in the semis and 1 survived to the BoNF finaly!

Now, I used a computer “random playlist” to get the running order for the final. I made a playlist which you can watch on BoNF’s youtube page. In the meantime, you can click on the postcard to check it out:

  1. Portugal | Pongo & Tristany, Dégrá.dê (DJ Marfox, Pongo, Tristany)
  2. Serbia | Sara Jo, Muškarčina (Slobodan Veljković Coby)
  3. Lithuania | Lolita Zero, Not your mother (Gytis Ivanauskas, Vitas Vaičiulis)
  4. Sweden | Cornelia Jakobs, Hold me closer (Isa Molin, David Zandén, Cornelia Jakobsdotter)
  5. Italy | La Rappresentante di Lista, Ciao ciao (Veronica Lucchesi, Dario Mangiaracina, Roberto Calabrese, Roberto Cammarata, Carmelo Drago, Simone Privitera)
  6. Finland | Olivera, Thank God I’m an atheist (Katriina Ullakko, Lenno Linjama, Alpo Nummelin)
  7. France | Alvan & Ahez, Fulenn (Marine Lavigne, Alvan Morvan Rosius)
  8. Lithuania | Monika Liu, Sentimentai (Monika Liubinaite)
  9. France | Marius Niollet, Les chansons d’amour (Marius Niollet, Igit, Jonathan Cagne)
  10. Serbia | Konstrakta, In corpore sano (Ana Ðuric & Milovan Boškovic)
  11. Portugal | Maro, Saudade, saudade (Maro, John Blanda)
  12. Croatia | Marko Bošnjak, Moli za nas (Vlaho Arbulic, Mihovil Šoštarić)
  13. Spain | Rigoberta Bandini, Ay mama (Rigoberta Bandini, Esteban Navarro Dordal, Stefano Maccarrone)
  14. Italy | Highsnob & Hu – Abbi cura di te (Michele “Highsnob” Matera, Federica “Hu” Ferracuti, Andrea Moroni, Fazio De Marco)
  15. France | Pauline Chagne, Nuit Pauline (Pauline Chagne, Antonin Tardy)

Results