This year’s Eurovision Song Contest in Malmö, Sweden, entered its hot phase on Tuesday evening with the first semi-final. On May 7, 15 of the participating countries that were not seeded for the final on Saturday competed to secure one of the coveted places. Due to a new rule, Germany was also allowed to perform; as a member of the so-called “Big Five”, it is already seeded for the final alongside France, Great Britain, Italy and Spain, as well as the host country. So which acts will be on stage at the final on Saturday alongside the countries mentioned?
The first act on Tuesday was Silia Kapsis (17) with “Liar” for Cyprus, followed by Teya Dora (32) with “Ramonda” for Serbia and Silvester Belt (26) with “Luktelk” for Lithuania. The non-binary act Bambie Thug (31) then put on a devilishly exciting performance with “Doomsday Blue” for Ireland. Described, among other things, as a mixture of late-night goth pop and confrontational performance art, the audience was certainly treated to one of the most unusual shows that could be seen at the ESC in recent years.
Alyona Alyona (32) and Jerry Heil (28) sang “Teresa
Raiven (28) then entered the race for Slovenia with “Veronika” and the Windows95man (38) apparently didn’t want to follow any rules with his comedic appearance. For Finland he jumped around the stage to “No Rules” mostly without pants. This was followed by Natalia Barbu (44) with “In The Middle” for Moldova, Fahree (29) and Ilkin Dovlatov (33) with “Özünlə Apar” for Azerbaijan, Electric Fields for Australia with “One Milkali”, Iolanda (29) completely in White with “Grito” for Portugal and most recently the singer Tali (23), who represented Luxembourg, which was taking part again for the first time in 31 years, with “Fighter”.
As a little breather, Olly Alexander (33), who competes for Great Britain, was allowed to sing the song “Dizzy” in between. For the first time, the aforementioned “Big Five” and the host will introduce their artists live to the audience over the two semi-finals. Later it was Germany and Sweden’s turn in the first semi-final.
The Norwegian twins Marcus and Martinus, who competed for the host country, sang their song “Unforgettable” – and presented themselves as “the Swedish Lochis”, like Thorsten Schorn (48) on his debut as German ESC commentator and successor to Peter Urban (76). joked. In addition to a burning garbage can and a later fire show, Isaak (29) presented his song “Always On The Run”. Hopefully the former is not a bad omen for the upcoming final, as Germany has notoriously performed quite poorly in the competition in recent years.
German viewers were entitled to vote in the first semi-final, in which only the audience decided who would advance. At the end of the show it was clear that the entries from Serbia, Portugal, Slovenia, Ukraine, Lithuania, Finland, Cyprus, Croatia, Ireland and Luxembourg would advance to the final round. The remaining entries are Baby Lasagna, Teya Dora, Iolanda, Silvester Belt, Silia Kapsis, Raiven, Bambie Thug, Tali, Alyona Alyona and Jerry Heil as well as Windows95man. Moldova, Iceland, Australia, Poland and Azerbaijan were eliminated.
In the second semi-final, 16 other participating countries will fight live on May 9th from 9:00 p.m. (on ONE and in the ARD media library) for one of the remaining ten places for the grand finale on May 11th. This can also be seen live on Das Erste and in the media library at 9 p.m.
