So, I was reading about the song, and I saw two conflicting reasons why the lyrics are nonsensical, despite her fluency in English. 1. It was because it was originally a love is love song, and the Georgian Delegations wouldn't allow that, so she changed the lyrics to be nonsensical to protest.

1. The lyrics make no sense because she wanted it to represent an echo. So, what's the actual deal with her lyrics, other than the fact that she's a Georgian representative?

Now I suspect that there is a thread somewhere already for this but I cannot find one through the Search, so I'll pose the question again...

Is there a Eurovision entry that has an earlier commercial release than Blanka's "Solo"? 23rd September is the date to beat that appears on download and steaming sites.

I‘m really proud of this one!

Is it just me who thinks 5MIINUST and Puuluup might have been better off at Eurovision with a staging concept similar to this one they made at a talkshow ahead of Eesti Laul? I still find myself going back to this particular performance from time to time

Almost everything was better here imo. I think it felt more engaging and even mysterious, from the fast, well-timed camerashots giving each member a moment to shine and the moment they break into the dance in the second chorus had more of a surprise factor here I'd say. Also loved how kohver stayed serious while everyone else were acting out 😂

Do you think this set-up could have translated well to the audience, and the Malmö crowd for that matter?

Which songs have some sort of reference to the host city, country or language where the contest took place in?

I can think of:

Host city: Germany 1999 and Austria 1979 who both sang about Jerusalem when the contest was hosted there.
Country: I can't think of one which specifically mentions something about the country.
Language: Estonia 2008 and Bulgaria 2012 who sang partly in serbian and had a few lines in azerbaijani respectively.

New chart! The blue columns are the results of Montenegro. The brown line with shading below it represents the average result for the country for every year. The black line is the 10-year average.

Bear in mind that I give Grand final results a score out of 100, and NQ results a score out of 1 (using decimals). There ARE other bars to show the nation's many NQ results, but they're very difficult to see.

Montenegro's track record

This Balkan nation has competed 13 times, and has only qualified twice. And neither of those were particularly great results.

The end result of this track record? An average score of 6.6/100 if you average all of their results. That number goes up to 8.6/100 if you only include their last ten entries.

No matter how you rank the countries (all of their songs' results, or the last 10), Montenegro is basically a statistical outlier. In fact, their results are closer to San Marino's than any other country. Which puts these two nations in their own weird league.

Quick example:

Remember when I said that Montenegro's score is 6.6/8.6? Well, the country that's ahead of them in my ranking is Morocco (10.5/100) for the overall average, and Georgia (11/100) for the last 10 years. That's, like, a gap of 3.9/2.4.

Compare that to San Marino: a score of 4.4 (2011-2025), or 6.1 (2015-2025). The gap between Montenegro and San Marino is 2.1/2.5. (Note that the 2.5 is rounded up).

If Sweden, Italy, and Ukraine are in the top-tier league, then Montenegro and San Marino are in the bottom league.

Rubric–

1. How good was the song this year?

2. Did their previous national final attempt produce anything good?

3. Has internal selection served them well?

France: 6/7. They’ve done well with their internal selections. All the artists were great and had pretty good songs with good placings this decade (except for Évidement, but it didn’t deserve it). I think they don’t need to switch to a national final, but they will probably produce a good song regardless (we have 2021 to prove it). Plus, Maman is just a good song.

Switzerland: 5/7. On one hand we have Zoë Më and Nemo finishing top 10 (Zoë finishing 10th without any public vote points and Nemo finishing first), and on the other, we have consistant nul points from the public vote. They shouldn’t switch to a national final considering how the resulting songs were usually non-qualifying dumpster fires.

United Kingdom: 5/7. They produce constant nul points, but their songs are usually good (in my opinion; much better than what they produced before). I think if they went back to the national finals that produced crybaby, teenage life, and hundreds of more songs blander than british food, they would get even worse results. The internal selection has produced Britain’s best result in years (Space Man by Sam Ryder), so I think they are better off without it. Plus, Remember Monday far outclasses all of the pre-2020 examples, and did not deserve the nul points.

Czechia: 5/7. Kiss Kiss Goodbye was ridiculously good, but didn’t get a good result. However, it makes sense for Czechia to cancel their national final since the production quality isn’t great and they probably don’t have the budget for it. However, their national finals in the past have produced good results before, and I don’t see a reason it can’t again. Since this is their first year, I’m curious to see what’s next in store.

Australia 6/7. With the exception of recent years, Australia has produced some of the greatest ESC songs within recent memory through an internal selection. Their national finals haven’t led to great results (of course they’ve only had 3 and one of them was in 2020, and yes I know 2019 had a top 10 result), and I think they’re better off with their internal selection. As for this year, the song was pretty good, but I think it missed out because the public disliked its sexual content. But because of Voyager and Dami Im and Guy Sebastian, it proves that they’re competent in selecting a good act.

Netherlands 7/7. They produced Arcade, Europapa, C’est la Vie, and others without a national final. Their national finals have lead to less than good results, and I think that they should just keep the internal selection.

Austria 7/7. They’ve only sent good acts with internal selection, and screwed up every single one of their national selections. Wasted Love is great, the Makemakes are not, and the only times they’ve won this century is through internal selection. Keep it for the sake of our eardrums.

Cyprus 4/7. They have sent Eleni once and have been desperately trying to get it back through staging alone. Theo Evan’s staging was great, but his vocals were so weak. The national finals and internal selections rarely select something that scores, so it gets a middle of the road score.

Georgia 4/7. The same goes for Cyprus, but worse. They haven’t had a decent result after 2010, and to me, the music scene has changed so dramatically that it’s unrealistic to recreate it using that exact same formula. They did bad with both types of selections and Freedom was terrible, so let’s move on.

Azerbaijan 3/7. Haven’t had a good result (outlier being 2019) since 2013. However, I do know that this is mostly because the power ballad phase in ESC is over. Their recent results are pretty bad, and while I liked Run with You as a studio version, the live version was just so bad. They should bring back the national final to see if they can maybe bring something good in.

That should be it. I might have missed a country, but I don’t think i did. Overall, I think internal selections are usually good for countries, but if the internal selection team is tone deaf, it’s a major issue

Officially, it is going to take place in late 2025 and has not been canceled yet. A Voxovation spokesperson said in an interview that the songs will be selected in August-September but that is still unofficial.