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Just five songs left from the Eurovision Song Contest’s 2020 entrants to face the judges. We still have the hits, misses, and maybes waiting… even if we’re not heading to Rotterdam as JBJ’s eighth show comes to a close.
Eurovision Insight Podcast: Juke Box Jury #8
with Rob Holley and Matthew KerDenmark: Yes, by Ben & Tan.
Latvia: Still Breathing, by Samanta Tina.
Slovenia: Voda, by Ana Soklič.
Italy: Fai Rumore, by Diodato.
Iceland: Think About Things, by Daði Freyr.
ESC Insight will be reviewing all of the songs selected for Rotterdam 2020 here on Juke Box Jury, so stay up to date with all our Eurovision coverage by listening to the ESC Insight podcast. You’ll find the show in iTunes, Google Podcasts, and Spotify. A direct RSS feed is available. We also have a regular email newsletter which you can sign up to here.
Denmark: totally agree with Ewan. If that stoopid chair song last year made 12th, this is easily top 10 in the magical 2020 Grand Final.
Latvia: easily qualifying and quite possibly top 10. Jurors would have lapped it up. it’s 4th best of the second half draw in semi-final two.
Slovenia: might be the annual “epic vocal trumps OK song” qualifier
Italy: reminds me of Francesca Michielini, including the disappointing result
Iceland: winner
Thank you so much for the joy and pleasure of the Jury Box shows. I’m always sad when the last one takes place. Looking forward to other podcasts and take care!
Last JBJ of what has been quite a strange season
Denmark-
Simple and effective. The ‘Say yes,say yes , say yes “in the course will make sure everyone would have voted for it. I agree with Matthew’s comment about this being “Only Teardrops” because staging wise they went to the variation of the Yellow/Gold from “Only Teardrops”, which is exactly what DR want people to think it is. But Only Teardrops was sweet and this one is a bit aggressive in its approach. It’s like someone is trying hard to sell the song and push it down our throat. I can’t say I really like it. It’s not a song you can ignore but it’s also not a song which remains around for long – MAYBE(for me)/HIT(for the contest)
Latvia-
This is a song with an attitude and you just can’t ignore her or the song.. Her live rendition during Supernova, missed something. Something in the balance between her singing and the background singers was not right for the song and the song was a bit unbalanced as a result of this. I also had issues with her diction. I couldn’t understand what she was singing about, during the live performance – If she has improved her diction and somehow bring some balance to the performance than it would eb a HIT , otherwise-MAYBE
Slovenia-
I am not sure why but for some reason I’ve expected that on a certain moment the beat will come out and give this song a bit of energy. The song would work better as a dance track. The start of the song is a bit dreamy and interesting but later in the song it turns out to be all drama and atmosphere but not so much or enough to keep my attention. Can I say that I almost fell asleep during the song? It also ends quite suddenly, when you were the least expecting to end -MISS
Italy-
It’s a male ballad, which we have quite a lot of these in this year’s line-up and if it was coming from any other country, it wouldn’t have that well received. But this is Italy and it sung in Italian and (almost) everyone think this is fabulous. I dare say there is a bias toward Italian male ballad. It’s not bland, it has passion and it’s definitely sung from the hart. It. is also very Italian Not sure how this would have fared. It could have gone either way. As usual, the song is 40 second to long and I do wonder where they would have cut the 40 seconds without ruining the structure of the song, Judging from Italian past songs, they would have manged to somehow f*** this up – MAYBE/HIT
Iceland-
This is clever without being too sophisticated. It retro and nostalgic without being cheesy, it has the right amount of attitude without being arrogant. It works on so many levels. The occasional viewer will fall for the simplicity of it(although it is not that simple). Eurovision fans will simply adore the wink and node the staging make to past staging(including moves taken from the book of Israeli staging, from years ago). If there is justice, this should have given Iceland its best result ever, which basically means they would have won for the first time -HIT
Thank you for doing JBJ this season. It meant I have something do to during long days of nothing.
Thank you to Ewan and co for pressing on with the series. We’ll never know for sure what would have happened this week, but these judgements gave us an idea. Iceland would probably have won with Italy in the top five. The UK would likely have finished in the 20s and my two favourites of the year (Croatia & Finland) probably wouldn’t have made it to Saturday. Now, it will be a relief to get past the 16th and start thinking about next year.
…and thanks for joining us on the JBJ journey. You might have spotted that it’s not quite over!
“Last JBJ of what has been quite a strange season”… almost, but not quite. Surprise!
Thank you MacLaren, we’ve got three more episodes for you to enjoy as a season closer.