Eurovision live blog Bingo 2024!
No live blog is complete without some bingo card suggestions. Of course, if you want to have a shot of drink each time you spot one of these things, you are welcome, but drinking is not compulsory. Instead you can just shout out “Rim Tim Tagi Dim!” or “Ram-di-dam-dam-dam!” or which ever bit of lyrics has got lodged in your brain already. Here are my suggestions …
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✨✨✨ A costume change! ✨✨✨
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✨✨✨ A keytar! ✨✨✨
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✨✨✨ One of the presenters raps! ✨✨✨
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✨✨✨ Someone says the evening/songs have been “wonderful”! ✨✨✨
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✨✨✨ A performance is designed to look great on TV but looks terrible in the hall! ✨✨✨
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✨✨✨ Unexpected use of the French language! ✨✨✨
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✨✨✨ An artist has their dog in their postcard! ✨✨✨
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✨✨✨ A painfully high note is delivered! ✨✨✨
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✨✨✨ A song includes a middle eight that seems entirely designed to facilitate the choreography! ✨✨✨
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✨✨✨ Twelve points from Greece to Cyprus! ✨✨✨
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✨✨✨ You’re live blogger makes a typo! [THAT’S THE JOKE] ✨✨✨
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✨✨✨ A cynical “uplifting” key change right near the end of the song! ✨✨✨
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✨✨✨ The wind machine is activated! ✨✨✨
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✨✨✨ An overlong pause delivering the “Douze points” when we are already running behind! ✨✨✨
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✨✨✨ Joanna Lumley! ✨✨✨
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✨✨✨ Someone presses the button to make fire appear on stage! ✨✨✨
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✨✨✨ The boys are bare-chested again! ✨✨✨
Key events
18: 🇵🇹 Portugal: Iolanda – Grito
This staging is the answer to the unspoken question, what if the Blue Man Group had picked white, and the song didn’t leave much of an impression on me at the semi-final stage – it is a fairly uneventful ballad – until you get to the 😱😱😱😱 at the end. You’ll see ✨✨✨ a painfully high note is delivered! ✨✨✨
I am still reeling from my entire family giving Finland 10/10 on every measure …
This is going down with absolute peals of laughter at my family Eurovision party so I now feel like a lonely curmudgeon …
17: 🇫🇮 Finland: Windows95man – No Rules!
I hate this. It’s like 2024-era Ricky Gervais doing a Eurovision entry and then going “Ooooo I’m so edgy they wouldn’t let me have the Windows logo and I’ve put a load of burden on everybody else around me in the staging for my genitals not to appear on live TV”. I absolutely loathe it. It will no doubt do well with edgelords.
16: 🇷🇸 Serbia: Teya Dora – Ramonda
All the potted bios of Teya Dora (her full name is Теодора Павловска) say she is mahoooooosive in the Balkans pop music scene. I can’t vouch for that but this seems like the kind of dark gothic ballad I ought to personally like but it doesn’t do it for me. I keep thinking the tinkly bell in the verse is going to break into Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy, but it never does. Nor does it ever really get going. The central thing in the staging is the rock … and it just looks a bit like a diseased molar to me.
Haha, it looks like since the semi-final Italy opted out of the “death by vine” costumes that was the main part of my review. The perils of live blogging live television.
15: 🇮🇹 Italy: Angelina Mango – La noia
This is a bit slight if you ask me, and the main thing is the costume choice, which looks like they’ve been attacked by ivy. It’s no Måneskin, that’s for sure.
Via Wiwiblogs, here is a clip of what Olly Alexander actually looked like in the room at rehearsals.
When the Netherlands was disqualified, I adjusted all the song numbers, but then the EBU decided they kept their original song numbers, so now I am confused, which bodes really well for the voting! Norway are going 13th, but are song 14. I think.
14: 🇳🇴 Norway: Gåte – Ulveham
With the Czech Republic and San Marino not making the cut, this is one of the few remaining entries with a bit of rock to it, and a little tinge of folk horror around it too. It has grown on me a bit, but I can’t see many points being accumulated here.
FULL DISCLOSURE: I suspect this picture choice from the end of the song also gives away that I pre-selected some pictures from the semi-final and dress rehearsals to use tonight
So I think that staging was amazing but I have a hunch – ✨✨✨ A performance is designed to look great on TV but looks terrible in the hall! ✨✨✨
13: 🇬🇧 UK: Olly Alexander – Dizzy
I was pretty lukewarm on this when it was first revealed, rather agreeing with my colleague Laura Snapes that it sounds like a rehash of Pet Shop Boys imperial It’s A Sin. But the staging! Wow. Hoo boy etc etc. I think it lifts it to another level entirely, and is going to have Daily Mail readers spluttering into their early evening Ovaltine. He should end up on the left-hand side of the final scoreboard at least.
I am a big fan of the bit where it stops and she orders the dancers around with that “Όπα, όπα, όπα, κάτσε, κάτσε, κάτσε”, although I also think it counts as ✨✨✨ A song includes a middle eight that seems entirely designed to facilitate the choreography! ✨✨✨
I’ll just leave this here …
I call this as starting as ✨✨✨ A performance is designed to look great on TV but looks terrible in the hall! ✨✨✨ because why the Insta live filter?
