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Counting Down The Top 100 Eurovision Semi Final Songs, #50 to #21 Written by on April 27, 2013 | 4 Comments

We are really heading into this chart now – last week you saw the list of songs that have achieved a top 100 place in the Semi Finals chart for 1993-2012, they were numbers 75 to 51, and the week before numbers 100 to 76, well this week we look at the next batch of those also-rans that placed between numbers 21 and 50.

It is a wonder, isn’t it, that many of those songs that have appeared so far did not make it into the actual Saturday night shows.  I’m sure you have your favourites, I certainly have, and there will be many more to come in the next couple of weeks.  But it’s also baffling that some of them even made it as far as those preliminary heats.  Like, how rubbish do you have to be to not only just miss out on a place in the final, but to languish at the very bottom – the lowest of the low – the proverbial smelly stuff stuck on the bottom of your shoe?

Nil Points, Semi-Final Style

Well, two songs have made that honour so far, scoring a big fat zero, null, didly-squat points in the semi finals.  Now that must hurt.  A lot.

One of them appeared in the very first semi final (in its current format) in Istanbul, Celebrate! by Piero Esteriore & The MusicStars (Switzerland, 2004) didn’t do it for the voting public on the night.  Nor me.  What an awful noise, so I am going to apologise in advance for making you play it now.

The second song that did sweet FA in the semi finals came 5 years later in Moscow.  Aven Romale by Gypsy.cz (Czech Republic, 2009) can’t have done the image of Eurovision much good at all in those Czech parts.  Maybe that’s why they’ve not really had their heart on participating very often.  I know the Czech Republic can do better than this…

And guess what?  Further supporting my previous statement about the Czech Republic’s efforts in this contest they have also managed to get the lowest ever ranking score in the semi finals.  At number 150 comes Malá dáma by Kabát (Czech Republic, 2007) with just 0.2% of the total score they could have achieved.  Not doing very well these Czech songs, huh?

Get on with it!

Right, let’s get back to some of the decent stuff.  Well, less rubbish stuff.  To recap on how I’ve worked this all out – I have taken the total number of points they earned and divided that by the total they could have achieved if every country voting in that semi final had given them maximum points.  2004-2012 is easy to calculate, 1993 and 1996’s results are a bit odd in the way the countries were scored so I have included those two years in the tally below but not numbered them.

  • 49= – Femme fatale by Evdokia Kadi (Cyprus, 2008)
  • 49= – Rushinka by Vlatko Ilievski (Macedonia, 2011)
  • 46=  – We Are the Heroes by Litesound (Belarus, 2012)
  • 46= – Shame on You by Tomas Thordarson (Denmark, 2004)
  • 46= – You and Me by Joan (Netherlands, 2012)

There was a lot of fan support for Joan Franka, and there’s nothing wrong with the song itself. Arguably the biggest prob;em with the number was the full indian head-dress that Franka insisted on wearing on stage as a personal totem. For a number of preview shows she had went with a single feather in her hair… would dropping the majority of feathers have given here another 11 points from the seventeen voting countries?

  • 45 – Love Me Tonight by Angelica Agurbash (Belarus, 2005)
  • 43= – Tii by Neiukõsõ (Estonia, 2004)
  • 43= – Laha’amin by David D’or (Israel, 2004)
  • 40= – I’m a Joker by Anri Jokhadze (Georgia, 2012)
  • 40= – A Century of Love by Geta Burlacu (Moldova, 2008)
  • 40= – Vrag naj vzame by Rebeka Dremelj (Slovenia, 2008)
  • 38= – Ding Dong by Dana International (Israel, 2011)

What’s the rule? You never go back, and Dana International giving us another perfect case of why. She wrote the song, she sang the song, she failed to do the press conferences, and she failed get out the semi-finals. That and the jokes were far too easy to make…

  • 38= – Vodka by Morena (Malta, 2008)
  • 37 – Stop by Omar Naber (Slovenia, 2005)
  • 36 – Time to Party by The Jet Set (Poland, 2007)
  • 35 – Lako je sve by Feminnem (Croatia, 2010)
  • 34 – Je T’Adore by Kate Ryan (Belgium, 2006)

What can we say… never buy into the fan hype, that’s what we can say.

  • 33 – Valentine Lost by Eiríkur Hauksson (Iceland, 2007)
  • 32 – Follow My Heart by Ich Troje featuring Real McCoy (Poland, 2007)
  • 31 – Jas ja imam silata by Gjoko Taneski (Macedonia, 2010)
  • 30 – Vida minha by Filipa Sousa (Portugal, 2012)
  • 29 – Salvem el món by Anonymous (Andorra, 2007)
  • 26= – I Don’t Wanna Leave by Lidia Kopania (Poland, 2009)
  • 26= – Celebrate by Daria Kinzer (Croatia, 2011)
  • 26= – När jag blundar by Pernilla (Finland, 2012)

Finland went for Prenilla Karlsson’s perfectly constructed song with a traditional staging last year, to a rather rambunctious little performer this year from Krista Siegfrids. The complete change of gears from a country is one of the great joys of the Contest.

  • 25 – Siren by Malcolm Lincoln & Manpower 4 (Estonia, 2010)
  • 24 – Nebo by Nina Badrić (Croatia, 2012)
  • 23 – Czarna dziewczyna by Ivan & Delfin (Poland, 2005)
  • 22 – I Love Belarus by Anastasiya Vinnikova (Belarus, 2011)
  • 21 – Dança comigo (vem ser feliz) by Sabrina (Portugal, 2007)

So there you have it, numbers 100 to 21 are all now available on the Semi-Final playlist at ESC Insight’s YouTube Channel for your listening pleasure.  Just promise me one thing, don’t play those zero-scorers too loudly?  You’ll probably end up being evicted.

Next week, 20 to the all-important number 1!

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Have Your Say

4 responses to “Counting Down The Top 100 Eurovision Semi Final Songs, #50 to #21”

  1. Stephen Colville says:

    “That and the jokes were far too easy to make…”

    I hope I’m wrong, but that seemed like a jab at her for being trans.

  2. Kevin says:

    I still absolutely love Je T’Adore. She came pretty close and I think she was unlucky that 2006 had a very strong semi (didn’t all 10 qualifiers finish in the top 12 in the final?) and the automatic qualifiers were pretty weak.

  3. Peter says:

    Stephen, I think it is a bit naive to think there aren’t going to be jokes made when a transgender personality sings about a dingdong. There was a lot of press about it at the time and was likely the reason Dana wasn’t doing many interviews. I also think that at least someone in her party must have made the connection long before the song was chosen for the contest and warned her what people might read into it, if indeed she hadn’t already realised it herself.

    Kevin, I totally agree. It was a good song apparently eclipsed by many other songs (or stage performances) – it happens all too often in the contest and is most likely the reason the wonderful ‘Lane moje’ lost to ‘Wild Dances’ in 2004 (no disrespect to Ruslana).

  4. Kevin says:

    I’ve seriously never made the connection between Dana and dingdong. Strange, since it’s so obvious.

    I’m pretty sure Kate would have qualified with the two semi finals system, but then still miss the top 10 in the final which would still be seen as a bit of a failure I think.

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