United by Music

We've made it - only the final batch of Eurovision 2025 entries are left to review! It's been a wild ride through national finals, internal selections and a few unexpected choices along the way. Before I move on to predictions, and a full dissection of all the pre-show chaos, let's wrap up the reviews with the songs from Croatia, Lithuania, Poland, Spain and Switzerland. Spain: Melody - "Esa diva" Spain don't often get it right at Eurovision. That sounds harsh, but a quick glance at their results over the last twenty years doesn't make for a particularly pleasant read. Don't get me wrong, there's been highs - Chanel's third-place finish in 2022 being the most notable (shout-outs also to Ruth Lorenzo and Blanca Paloma) - but my goodness, the lows have been low . This year, Benidorm Fest once again returned as the Spanish national final and produced Melody with the song "Esa diva". Melody almost represented Spain in 2009, however, came ...

  We're almost there - with just a couple of posts remaining, I'm getting ever closer to having assessed the full cohort of Eurovision 2025. As always, I'll be keeping predictions to a minimum; just thoughts, feelings and probably a few too many adjectives! Onwards we go, with entries from Austria, Czechia, Malta, Montenegro and San Marino. Malta: Miriana Conte - "Serving" If any country has the right to feel aggrieved by the re-introduction of televote-only semi-finals, it's surely Malta. Time and again, the small island nation with little diaspora to speak of struggles to get off the ground with the public from across the continent, and never has this been more apparent than in 2023 and 2024, when Malta finished last with the televote despite sending slick, polished packages on both occasions. This year, the Malta Eurovision Song Contest returned as the country's national selection with a revised format and several songs which would have had a reasonable...

With twenty-two songs down and only fifteen more to go, I'm racing against time to finish reviewing all 37 songs before the madness of Eurovision week fully descends. Let's take a look at today's offerings, which come from Albania, Germany, Greece, Norway and Slovenia. Norway: Kyle Alessandro - "Lighter" It's probably safe to say that Norway's national selection, Melodi Grand Prix, wasn't at its best this year. Over the last few years, we've become used to seeing a strong final from Norway, with several songs that could succeed at Eurovision, however this year's selection felt somewhat half-baked. Maybe after Gåte's disappointing result last year, NRK wanted to send something more palatable to the rest of the continent, which gave us a slightly unusual collection of songs in that none of them really brought us anything new. To the credit of the Norwegian public, they did send forward arguably the best package of the lot, in Kyle Alessandro...

The Eurovision 2025 review journey continues here! By now, national final season is a distant memory and it's all about the songs themselves. I have another handful of songs to dissect, so stay with me as I review Armenia, Serbia, Sweden, Ukraine and the United Kingdom. Armenia: Parg - "Survivor" Armenia seem to have hit their stride in Eurovision recently. After a slightly patchy period in the late 2010s, including two consecutive non-qualifications, they have made it through every year since they returned in 2022, finishing in the top ten last year with "Jako". Notably, it was also Armenia that gave Eurovision arguably its biggest hit ever, with Rosa Linn's "Snap". This year, Armenia returned to using the national final Depi Evratesil to select their Eurovision entry for the first time since 2020, and this gave us "Survivor", performed by Parg (the stage name of Pargev Vardanian). It's a fairly simple, unremarkable song with the sor...

It's time for another round of Eurovision 2025 reviews! The countdown to the live shows is still ticking away and the playlist is getting more familiar with every listen. Let's dive straight in and discuss the entries from Belgium, Denmark, Estonia, Israel and Italy. Israel: Yuval Raphael - "New Day Will Rise" Israel's participation in Eurovision continues to be a highly contentious issue among fans, with many people, including recently the Icelandic foreign minister, calling for their exclusion in light of the conflict in Gaza. As I said in my  Eurovision preview , I fully respect the position of those who have chosen not to cover Israel's song this year, however, Eurovision is not a competition between governments, and the song has been deemed eligible to participate by the EBU, so I will separate my opinions on this from what I see in the news as much as I can. That being said, "New Day Will Rise", this year's Israeli entry, really does feel l...