The mother of all crappy music contests continues today at 9:00 pm CET (3:00 Eastern Standard Time in the USA) with a second semifinal, where 15 countries will duke it out to go to the Grand Final on Saturday.
The countries:
Malta: Firelight - "I'm Coming Home", a turbo-folk ballad supposedly about World War I
Israel: Mei Finegold - "Same Heart", where Mei channels Beyonce to tell some asshole to fuck off
Norway: Carl Espen - "Silent Storm", which is more silent than storm
Georgia: The Shin and Mariko - "Three Minutes to Earth", which is weird, wild, and wonderful
Poland: Donatan and Cleo - "My Slowianie - We Are Slavic", a satire of stereotypes about Polish people, especially women
Austria: Conchita Wurst - "Rise Like a Phoenix", a Bond-ish song sung by Europe's most androgynous human being ever
Lithuania: Vilija Mataciunaite - "Attention", where the narrator claims that all you've got to do for a lot of love is treat her with attention and a little care
Finland: Softengine - "Something Better", a homage to The Killers, I think
Ireland: Can-Linn featuring Kasey Smith - "Heartbeat" - more turbo Irish folky song
Belarus: Teo - "Cheesecake", which is about a guy who hates his nickname so much that he dumps his girlfriend
FYR Macedonia: Tijana Dapcevic - "To the Sky", generic Europop
Switzerland: Sebalter - "Hunter of Stars", which wins the prize for best lyrics, most whistling, and a lawyer who sings it
Greece: Freaky Fortune featuring Riskykidd - "Rise Up", which repeats the title of the song no less than 50 times in it
Slovenia: Tinkara Kovac - "Round and Round", by a self-described 'flute professor gone bad'
Romania: Paula Seling and Ovi - "Miracle", by two people who can't find a rhyming dictionary for the life of them.
Catch the semifinal at http://www.eurovision.tv/page/webtv !
We'll figure out whether we want to use the IRC or this thread to comment.
Fun fact: The Polish song's English version references Slavic girls' intelligence. Out of the two people who won a Nobel Prize twice, one of them is... a Slavic woman.