We have reached the final five songs of the day! I’m trying to not think about how long it feels because tomorrow is longer.

Anyhow:

Georgia
Still as visually, vocally and emotionally strong and before. Still an extremely difficult song to sell, but like I said in the first run through, if they fail to qualify, it won’t be for the lack of trying.

Australia
Honestly? I don’t know what to make of this. On one hand, Kate is amazing and the idea to depict zero gravity in this way is cool and it generally comes together better than it did in the first run throughs. On the other hand, it does look like a gimmick fest with little substance, which is made worse when you know this song actually has a deep meaning and an important story behind it, and while I am amazed she can sing that well while flying on a stick, she’s still unable to really express any emotion – something that is made even harder by that particular style of singing. Also, because of the staging choice, a lot of camera angles are still excluded from use, and that combination of no developing story and few camera angles makes the whole thing repetitive really quickly.

Iceland
Hatari are another one that have polished a lot of things from the first run through: the visuals connect better and flow better throughout, and there are also proper backing vocals for Klemens, so it sounds better too. It’s very uncompromising in terms of styling and staging, which I respect, but in terms of chances it does keep us all within the very subjective discussion of what potential target audience this has. It does pretty much nothing to reach out to an audience that perhaps normally wouldn’t be into this kind of thing, so it comes down to how much support this kind of song has musically – and how much of that audience will find this particular fashion type appealing and won’t find the anger that is seeping through both the singing and the red staging too alienating.

Estonia
We finally got to see a full run through, and I can’t really say that the wait was worth it. The stage looks too nondescript for too long, which I suppose was a sacrifice they had to make to include the green screen, but with how sophisticated the stage is, the effect looks more silly than impressive.

Victor, while sympathetic as always, kept going painfully off-key in the part where the effect kicks in, and while I believe he is experienced enough to sort this out, it’s obvious he’s struggling. Overall, though, Estonia still brings the lovely face and the normal song in the middle of the madness that is the second half of this semi.

Portugal
There are definitely some visible improvements in this, with a considerably larger number of close up shots and better lighting on the two guys. The rest of it, though, is still problematic, because even with adopting my first suggestion of allowing us to see more of the dance throughout so we can get used to it and follow it through, the setup is still very dark and too busy – and when new audience comes to this for the first time, there’s still too much visual overload to be able to take it all in.

That’s all for today! I will come back tomorrow for a very very long day which includes the last two countries from semi 1, a bunch of semi 2 contenders and, most excitingly of all, the first rehearsals of all the direct qualifiers!