Eurovision Song Contest 2022

I can't believe people see any particular credibility in the juries! Just look at the make-up of ours - absolutely no reason they should have any more "professional" judgement for a song contest than the average viewer.

Blathnaid Treacy - famous for bring in Glenroe as a baby, presents the Lotto.

Deirdre Crookes - PR person associated with Electric Picnic.

Julian Vignoles - ex Hot Press, RTE commissioning editor, writer, documentary maker.

Niamh Kavanagh - singer, Eurovision winner 1993.

Philip McMahon - playwright and theatre director.

Some of these are very accomplished in their area of expertise and I'd have great time for Philip McMahon in particular, but they have no business claiming any more expertise in judging songs than the general public.

I've no problem with Niamh Kavanagh and if the rest were of a similar background then fair enough. But the whole defence of the jury is that "it's a SONG contest" and the public are too swayed by flashy staging and gimmicks. So I don't think Philly McMahon is any more valid than the rest of us if it's supposed to be about the song.

Eurovision tends to split opinion, people have various tastes which is great, but IMHO the Irish entry was not good.

Just checked where we finished, and we finished 15th out of 18 in our semi-final.

Across the two semi-finals we finished 29th out of 35, (10 from each semi-final went through).

Across the whole competition we finished 34th out of 40.

So, to those who’ve said we did a good job, we were not even close to the standard we should be striving for.

No offence intended towards the singer and the dancers in her act, but the song and the choreography and the theatrics for the song just weren’t up to scratch.

Some of the other countries made use of the fantastic stage and props on offer, we chose a basic single singer with cheesy lyrics and a robotic simple dance routine that wouldn’t impress anyone.

I think generally each song will win votes across things like, vocalist (demonstrate some extraordinary ability like the UK did), Choreography (Ukraine had an insane break-dancer for example), Theatrical performance (Armenia for example, and arguably Ireland tried it last time), and lastly popularity, for example the UK entrant was so likeable, as was the Moldovan entrants (our version of Jedward basically).

I would appreciate if next year we picked an 18 year old (and by that I mean someone with a new verve) with some talent and gave them licence to decide on the theatrical delivery of their piece.

The days of phoning it in with a single singer with a bland song and a few rehearsed dance moves is long gone, thankfully.

Do people genuinely think the irish song was good? the girl can not sing, how on earth was she even chosen she genuinely cant sing. Like if she put on a show like Oxana maybe she could get away with it. But Oxana was pretty much a opera singer compared to that girl. Christ above

Just heard the presenter on Radio Kerry this morning say that the Ukrainian song that won this year was better than Maneskin's, holy god what an idiot.

Agreed, I think next year it would be better if those songs performed during the semi final on Tuesday and Thursday when the voting is happening. I know we get snippets but it's not really the same.

I think it is safe to say that ESC 2023 will not be hosted in Ukraine. It might be hosted/organised by the Ukrainian Broadcaster but not held in the country. My guess is in Poland, probably in Krakow as that is near the border with Ukraine so ESC will still head east. We'll just have to wait and see.....

Regarding Ireland, our result was disappointing, I thought we had a real chance of making it. I think the poor camera work and the speaking part/rap in the song might have been a turn off for juries and viewers alike. Poor Brooke 😥

If you look at entries that have done really well recently, most of them have a distinct flavour of the country they represented and were executed perfectly;

SloMo was latin pop, Spaceman was British Stadium rock channelling Bowie, Freddie Mercury & Elton John, Voila was classic French Chanson, Maneskin were Italian Rock, Amor Pelor Dos was Portuguese Jazz and so on. That is the route we need to take to get strong results, send entries authentic to to country and recognisably Irish to an international audience but executed perfectly. The styles could be;

Uplifting/heart breaking ,emotionally charged rock ballads - think U2, Hozier, The Cranberries, Sinead O'Connor style songs.

Irish Traditional ballads or uptempo - channelling The Dubliners, The Pogues, Could be slow but also we could have an Irish equivalent to Moldova's successful entry this year.

Celtic infused pop - we tried that in 2014 but the execution was a mess. Think a modern take on The Corrs

Something new-age/Celtic - Reminiscent of Enya, Clannad, our last winner Eimear Quinn but modernised.

The last time we successfully staged something that had an Irish flavour was in 2018 and it is no co-incidence that was our only qualification of the past 8 contests. RTE like boasting about our record 7 wins but that will likely be matched by Sweden in the next few years, also both France & the UK have 5 wins, both came second in the last 2 contests so could get a 6th win soon. The only way we can retain our title as is by winning an 8th victory. It will be interesting to see how RTE respond to another ESC disaster.

Ukraine's culture minister said to Poland and Lithuania that their 12 points to the UK “does not reflect our real attitude towards you" as they deem Poland and Lithuania as “our closest friends in Europe”.

I just read it here:

In the 2nd semi final 6 countries reported results from their juries that were ‘irregular’ according to the EBU and were replaced with results based on the pots each country is placed in to determine what semi final they participate in. As in the results that the EBU used for those countries was based on their historical voting patterns. The Danish broadcaster is accusing those 6 countries of exchanging votes to ensure qualification. In the final however the results of the Romanian, Azerbaijani and Georgian juries were altered by the EBU without explanation hence the reason why those three countries are seeking clarification. The EBU supervisor on the night announced the results of those three countries himself which he stated was due to technical issues. The Romanian, Azerbaijani and Georgian broadcasters say they had no technical issues at all.