The number of confirmed entries for the 2022 Eurovision Song Contest doubled yesterday as the Czech Republic announced its entry. A combined expert jury of former ESC participants (including Paul Harrington and Charlie McGettigan as separate jurors!) and the Czech and international public vote were combined to find the winner among the seven candidates.

The Czechs voted in favour of our chat’s favourite, Jordan Haj & Emma Smetana and the quirky “By Now”. However, the jury and the international public had different ideas, both favouring “Lights Off” by We Are Domi instead – which was enough to give the electro-pop trio the victory.

You can watch the winning performance of “Lights Off” here:

Elsewhere in ESC 2022 news, we have two more artists to look forward to next year. The Netherlands will be represented by Stien den Hollander, better known under her artist name S10, and she has promised us the first Dutch-language entry since Sieneke in 2010!

Meanwhile, her back catalogue suggests that an English-language song is most likely from the entrant representing Greece: Amanda Tenfjord. As her artist name indicates, she is Scandinavian – specifically Norwegian – but her origins are in Greece, and indeed several of the announcements have referred to her as “Amanda Georgiadis Tenfjord” or variations on a theme.

Since our last update, Lithuania announced the participants in Pabandom iš naujo! 2022. They include a number of familiar faces – Erica Jennings (2001), Ieva Zasimauskaitė (2018), Monika Linkytė (2015) and Vilija Matačiūnaitė (2014), for example, as well as previous national final entrants such as Gebrasy and Titas & Benas.

Speaking of familiar faces, the line-up for Spain‘s Benidorm Fest may include such indie pop darlings as Rigoberta Bandini, but Eurovision fans (or “eurofáns”, to use the word that this week entered the official Spanish dictionary – no, really!) are perhaps most excited by the return of Azúcar Moreno, the sister duo who opened the 1990 Eurovision Song Contest and suffered one of the most famous technical malfunctions in ESC history:

Over in Sweden, the semi-final draw and running order for the heats of Melodifestivalen 2022 have been announced. And you are surely as incensed as we are that “Lyckligt slut” is on 2nd – followed by a song called “Best To Come” – not to mention the fact that “The End” has been placed 27th out of the 28 entrants. It’s called “The End”, for heaven’s sake. Talk about missing an open goal, guys…!

STARTORDNINGEN!!! 😍😍 #melfest 2022 pic.twitter.com/6HOqc2o0FT

— Melodifestivalen (@SVTmelfest) December 14, 2021

Last but not least, this week saw some big news about a contest long before 2022. Famously, the 1964 Eurovision Song Contest does not exist on video. Despite extensive searches of TV company archives around Europe, all we have of the contest is a brief clip of Gigliola Cinquetti’s winning reprise. Or at least that’s what we thought – until a Reddit user discovered some extra footage in the YLE archives in Finland, including scenes of the host addressing the audience and cutely asking them to calm down a little after their rapturous reception for the winner! While it is assumed that these three minutes were stored in a news archive and they don’t necessarily indicate that the entire show is sitting in vault somewhere after all, it’s easy to feel a little more hopeful that the full show might eventually turn up after all these decades…

You can watch the footage here and read the background information from the uploader here.

So, that’s our update for this time. What’s coming up in the days ahead? Well, Albania is on the horizon as soon as Christmas is done – but in the meantime, the Junior Eurovision Song Contest takes place in Paris this Sunday afternoon, and we’ll be gathering in our #esc chat to enjoy the show together and vote for our faves. Why not join us there?

title image © We Are Domi’s Instagram