Eurovision 2023 roundup Part 1: the year I cared about the Semi-Finals

This year, I became a true Eurovision fan. Anyone who's spoken to me in the last 2 months, or read my previous gig review, or my analysis of Australia's entry, knows I became an instant and absolute Voyager fanboy because of this year's contest. But having come for the prog metal, I stayed for the whole varied flamboyant mess, which this year included so many other things I like: flamenco, dark electronic dance music, a good clutch of strong vocalists, weird song concepts, contestants doing covers of each other's songs, and stupid but wholesome social media nonsense.

It's getting on for 2 weeks after the 2023 Eurovision Grand Final and I'm still thinking about it. So here's an attempt to wean myself off Eurovision for a bit and gain some closure on the whole thing. This is Part 1 of my personal roundup of this glorious spectacle.

Let's start with acts that got knocked out at the semi-final stage. For the first time, I paid attention to the Semi-Finals this year, as I was invested in Australia making the Grand Final and exposing Voyager's prog metal sound to an audience of hundreds of millions. Being keen to see how the performances might look on stage and what competition Australia might have, I'd also listened at least once to the studio recordings of all 37 entries.

First off, because I am now some sort of full-on Eurovision nerd apparently, I've come up with a scoring system in 2 parts: first for the song composition itself, incorporating the studio recording:

no stars = if I had control of the playlist I would turn it off or skip

★ wouldn't skip if it came up on shuffle

★★ on my "2023 Eurovision Favourites" playlist on Spotify

★★★ spent my own money getting a digital download; gone digging around their back catalogue for more stuff

★★★★ bought their entire back catalogue; checking out tour dates

Next, for the vocal performance in particular on the night (NB: just the vocals because everything else is recorded and played back):

No faces = out of tune or poor tone, either on average, or with a small number of mistakes so glaring the song is ruined

😮 Good enough to execute the song competently on the night without drawing attention to the mistakes that did occur.

😮😮Control and artistry was demonstrated, but not for the whole song.

😮😮😮Consistent control and artistic judgement throughout.

😮😮😮😮In control and musically well-judged, with genuinely impressive stand-out moments. 

For the fallen: Semi Final casualties

I was pleasantly surprised at the depth of the competition and I was actually even sad about some of those that didn't qualify for the final. The 11 songs that didn't go the distance were:

• Netherlands😮😮 - very respectable singing from both vocalists but the song composition didn't give me much to be interested in. I suspect its melancholy nature didn't appeal to the televoting public either.
  
• Azerbaijan😮★ - a fair result but somehow I still feel a little sad for them, particularly since the bass player's strap came unhooked mid-song. The song somehow feels like several famous britpop singles squished into one.
  
• Ireland - a deserved knock-out. The songwriters seemed to have tried very hard to write a song specifically for Eurovision, and yet somehow managed to misunderstand the spirit of Eurovision and make something entirely generic and uninspiring. On the night, the lead singer had neither the vocal technique to execute the song, nor the stagecraft to persuade the audience not to care about it. He was seemingly allergic to his microphone, holding it so far away at points that his voice was very low in the mix, and whole sections were essentially carried by the so-called "backing" vocals on playback. On re-watching, he was obviously uncomfortable on stage, maybe even experiencing a bad attack of stage fright. But his entitled whingeing after being knocked out ("the truth is they never give Ireland a chance") removed what sympathy I might have had for him.
  
• Latvia😮😮😮★ - I think these guys deserved a spot in the final, while understanding why they didn't get one. An interesting composition, with bits in 5/4, and a chorus in 3/4. The vocals were excellently performed, but stylistically the song was quite indeterminate and I don't think they gave the public any obvious reason to vote for them.
  
• Malta😮😮★★ - I genuinely enjoy listening to this song and was sad to see it go out, even though it's breaking no boundaries. They performed well, and the composition had a funky sax lick and a head-nodding groove.
  
• San Marino - a not-entirely-terrible rock song, which I'd love to have heard sung competently (or just not horribly sharp on the high notes, honestly). Finding out that they received zero points was the least shocking news ever.
  
• Georgia😮😮😮★ - another act possibly deserving of a final place. Very competent vocal performance on the night and a pretty epic song - possibly too epic, as it went in pretty hard and seemed to lack a sense of structure or development.
  
• Greece - another fair result. The composition was forgettable and the vocal delivery was shaky, both in pitch and rhythm.
  
• Iceland😮😮😮★★ - the last of my nominations for acts that should have made the grand final. The Drum 'n' Bass backing is to my taste, and the vocal performance was really confident on stage.
  
• Romania😮 - bit of a weird one this: the slow-ish 12/8 bluesy feel made me feel I ought to like it, but it took me a while to realise I didn't actually like it at all because there wasn't much else in the composition to grab on to. The vocal performance was adequate though.
  
• Denmark - I really struggled to find anything positive about this. The generic over-produced pop backing often overwhelmed the singer in performance. His live vocals often only became truly identifiable when he sang out of tune, which was quite frequently. Interestingly, in contrast to the other poor vocal performances, which were all quite reliably sharp, he was variously sharp and flat at different points.
  

Semi-Finals: actually worth watching‽

So 11 acts were knocked out, 4 of which I'd have happily seen make the final. The main thing though, was that my New Favourite Band, Voyager, had qualified on behalf of Australia. Presumably in order to avoid bias in the final, the actual results are not announced on the night, just a list of the 10 qualifiers in no particular order. As we would later find out after the Grand Final results were announced, Voyager actually topped the results in Semi-Final 2.

Not only is this the year I cared about the Semi-Finals, it made me aware of the potential quality of entrants that get knocked out at the Semi-Final stage. As I'll maybe discuss later, next year I think I'll need to limit my exposure to Eurovision for my own sanity. But one thing I definitely will be doing is checking out all the Eurovision entrants, whether they qualify for the Grand Final or not. I mean, looking back even just to 2022, I'm extremely pleased to have discovered the non-qualifying entries from Georgia and Latvia - both fun tunes that have made my life a little better for having discovered them!

In Part 2 of my Eurovision roundup, I'll start to review the Grand Finalists.