This article forms part of the OnEurope archive and was originally published on oneurope.co.uk. It has been permanently migrated to oneurope.net, the official home of OnEurope.
In no particular order:
Montenegro
San Marino
Finland
Latvia
Hungary
Austria
Iceland
and…
shockingly, Ireland…
will be going home tomorrow. That doesn’t look particularly correct, but we’ll see.
All eight countries were competing in tonight’s first semi-final in Baku, where ten places in Saturday’s final were up for grabs. Ireland meant Jedward and “Waterline”, which makes that prediction a little less random and a little more shockingly wrong: after their success for Ireland in 2011, I was still expecting them to be sent home.
Keep an eye out for bulletins on Albania, however – the last I heard, a fatal bus crash has left the country officially in mourning and RTSH hoping to compete in – but not broadcast – tonight’s show. When real life hits, this makes a frothy European party rather unimportant, so I’m pretty confident that whatever RTSH and Rona‘s wishes are, they’ll be respected by the organisers. My expectation is that it’ll have little visible effect on tonight’s event, and from a shallow fluffy Eurovision-bubble viewpoint Rona’s performance of a tragic, unhappy song lent extra resonance is likely to be absolutely electrifying.
In the event, Albania did perform “Suus”, as scheduled, in fifth place. RTSH delayed its broadcast of the semi-final during the national day of mourning, and Albania’s voting was based on its national jury rather than a normal public televote. Rona Nishliu later said that she dedicated the performance to those killed and injured in the crash.
And, for the archive record: Montenegro, Latvia, Finland, San Marino and Austria really did go home. Iceland qualified in eighth place, Hungary in tenth and Ireland in sixth. Albania qualified in second place with 146 points, then finished fifth in the final with the same score – the country’s highest Eurovision finish.
