It’s April, and that means it’s time for our annual line-up check of the forthcoming Eurovision Song Contest!

Over the next few weeks, we will take a closer look at all 43 competing songs, giving our verdict and a first prediction. Of course, it’s hard to predict just how well (or badly) a song is actually going to do, especially before the rehearsals begin – but predicting is part of the passion of being a Eurovision fan, isn’t it?

And since our editors – Felix, Martin and Shi – all share that passion, each of them will have their say. One will be the main reviewer for each entry, including a personal verdict on the song’s quality and its chances in the contest, then the other two will get a brief “right of reply”. That way you’ll get to see the entire escgo! team’s views on all 43 songs.

Assuming the running order for the semi-finals is announced tomorrow as anticipated, our series will kick off with whichever song is given the honour of opening the first show. And if not, we’ll start alphabetically with Albania and proceed from there!

So stay tuned to see what we think of the entries and what we feel might happen at ESC 2018 in Lisbon.

As a little warm-up, how about a few words from our editors on an exciting national final season?

Felix: “The first thing that comes to my mind when I think of this season is my impression that many shows happened on Saturdays. Sometimes it was hard to decide which show to watch. I feel like we didn’t really have the time to get into this season, as it felt rather short with most things happening in February. I remember seasons when shows were more evenly spread from November until March. Now we’re back to “FiK first!”, and as a FiK fanboy I’m fine with that, but the bulk of the season could take off a little sooner in general.”

Martin: “From my point of view, I didn’t mind the shorter feel of the season. I often feel like I’m getting burnout by the time the Melodifestivalen/Melodi Grand Prix weekend rolls around, but this year it was fine. It was great to see some countries returning to selection formats that we hadn’t seen for a while – the French semi-finals were a particular treat, while Spain seems to have gone crazy for the return of Operación Triunfo, which is awesome. Even if they’re still waiting for an actual Triunfo.”

Shi: “It’s been an interesting and in some ways confusing season for me as a Eurovision fan. And I have a lot more to say about it than I could fit into this paragraph. So much so, in fact, that I’m going to save it for a separate post. Watch this space!”

And on that note: Let the escgo! line-up check for ESC 2018 begin!