Eurovision 2024: reviews of Semi-Final 2 casualties

[UPDATE, 11 May: since writing this, The EBU have prohibited The Netherlands from competing in the Grand Final tonight.]

Semi-Final 2 happened last night and we now know which countries are competing tomorrow in the Grand Final. That means 6 more entrants failed to make the cut - I'll review them here and round up the most notable moments from the rest of Semi-Final 2. (Same scoring system as before, see below*)

Semi-Final 2: non-qualifiers

Albania: Besa - "Titan" 😮😮

A perfectly decent delivery of this underwhelming composition. One positive aspect of this staging was that they kept two of the backing singers that were present in the original version, as performed at the Albanian national final. Adequate pitching, confident delivery, no mistakes but not much artistic expression either. On balance, a deserved elimination.

Czechia: Aiko - "Pedestal" ★★😮😮

Now this one I'm disappointed about saying goodbye to. Aiko's delivery was grungy enough to suit the style but distinct enough to show she has some technique. The indie rock feel stood out from the crowd, and had an attitude and lyrics that were unique in this year's contest. I'm still missing the original version with multiple occurences of "bullshit" in though, I thought that captured the spirit of the rest of the lyrics better.

Aiko Czechs out in style

Denmark: Saba - "Sand"😮

This performance didn't make me like the song any more, but it was delivered without any glaring mistakes and I'm not sure there's a great deal else to say about it. One thing that's maybe notable is that there are parts in this where it's just a bit low for Saba to sing effectively. I think there's a perception that singing lower is both easier and cooler-sounding, but if your voice can't comfortably go that low, what are you supposed to do? The songwriters should have re-written the low passages or the whole thing should have been transposed up a bit. I've noticed similar issues with other female vocalists' songs, the one that immediately comes to mind being Nebulossa's Zorra.

Malta: Sarah Bonnici - "Loop"😮😮

Plastic and tacky though the playback might have sounded, I was pleasantly surprised by Sarah Bonnici's vocals here, especially given the dance moves involved throughout. The pitching was accurate and the tone suited the style of the song. It's only a slight breathiness in timbre (that I don't think was intended) that stops me giving Sarah 3 sing-y faces. Good job overall, can't say I'll miss the song but it's always a little sad to see anyone proudly perform well and still get knocked out.

Belgium: Mustii - "Before the Party's Over" ★

This was probably the most disappointing surprise amongst the non-qualifiers, as Mustii got plenty of early-season hype on account of being an existing TV personality, and he put out a great music video which looked and sounded great - it even coaxed a single star out of me despite me being pre-disposed to dislike most things that sound like a pop ballad. But come show time, his vocals were generally sharp in the run-up to the climax, particularly when flipping over to falsetto. The end result was that the theoretically well-earned climax ("Before the party is over" belted out many times) was frankly a bit incongruous because the approach was so weakly executed. In a ballad like this, where the solo voice is the whole point, that's basically fatal. No sing-y faces from me and a deserved knock-out.

San Marino: Megara - "11:11" ★★😮😮

I am so sad to see this go: Megara brought party energy and rock/metal to the stage, and performed it well. The overall feel was really refreshing when contrasted with the other styles on offer and I think the Grand Final is worse off without this song in it. Vocals weren't pretty, of course, but they were largely accurate and suited the style. As the song itself says "if you don't want me, then someone else will". I hope that turns out to be right, Megara deserve a bit of recognition.

Megara, yo les querrá a ustedes.

Standout moments from Semi-Final 2

There were plenty of surprises in the rest of the semi-final too. Some performers were disappointingly bad:

• Greece's Marina Satti gave a surprisingly bad performance, at least compared to my expectations based on some of her amazing live footage such as this concert from Athens. She struggled to be in tune for most of the sung sections, generally drifting sharp. She waved her microphone about carelessly enough that sections of her vocals were inaudible. The best you could say is that she made no glaring mistakes and she's done enough to qualify. I have plenty of sympathy for her, with the continuous camera shot to co-ordinate with choreography, and the breathlessness that leads to, plus of course she's performing just weeks after the death of her father. I dread to think how well I'd have coped with that pressure in the same position, so I'll stop there. I still love the song and really hope Marina comes back strong tomorrow.
  
• Estonia's live vocals were irredeemably terrible, and I hate writing that because I love the recorded version of their song. They went with the same gimmick as in the Estonian national final, namely the first vocalist starting to sing from within the audience then joining the rest of the group on stage. That first vocalist was sharp just like before, but this time everyone else in the group also edged sharp and remained so throughout basically the whole act. Even Marko's bass-register bits sounded a bit weak. Estonia are getting zero sing-y faces from me if they perform like that tomorrow, sadly.
• [UPDATE, 11 May: The Netherlands will no longer be competing in the Grand Final] The Netherlands' Joost Klein delivered a very sloppy vocal performance combined with some very (purposefully) home-made looking staging choices. I think my main thought about this live performance is just that there wasn't much singing. In the really catchy bit which could be sung ("Europa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa"), Joost only sings "Euro", and shouted out of tune at that. The repeated "Welkom in Europa" phrase is sung recognisably, but not well. Everything else is either spoken word or carried by the playback track.
  

A few acts really stood out for their high quality performances:

• Israel's Eden Golan has an incredibly dull song to sing, but nevertheless did a basically perfect job of performing it last night. There is all sorts of related controversy playing out as I write, and since any attempt to summarise it will inevitably be a failure, I'll refrain from commenting expect to say: who knows how this entry is going to go down with jurors and televoters tomorrow? Certainly not me.
• I'm delighted that Norway's Gåte brought their A-game yesterday and really did their folk metal song justice.
• Similarly, Armenia's Ladaniva were an absolute joyous riot. As expected, Jaklin's vocal technique was sublime and she combined that with pure folk party stage presence. I am rooting for these lovely musicians almost as hard as I rooted for Australia's Voyager last year.
• Italy's Angelina Mango did exactly what I expected and knocked out an excellent performance too.
• Switzerland's Nemo again delivered excellent live vocals combined with simple but impressive staging. I sense that the momentum is shifting towards Switzerland as a potential winner but I still have faith in Italy, let's see if I'm right!
  

My predictions: 64% 58% correct so far

Out of my 6 non-qualifier predictions, only 3 have turned out to be correct, meaning I'm down to 7 out of 11 (64%) accuracy overall so far. [UPDATE, 11 May: down to 7 out of 12 after the EBU's ejection of The Netherlands].  Georgia, Israel and Latvia defied my gloomy prophesies and Czechia, Belgium and Malta replaced them. I'm not too surprised by the Malta / Georgia swap - maybe there was only ever room for one female soloist with a dembow dance number from this Semi-Final. Latvia and Israel were more unexpected qualifiers for me, but then I have a bias against ballads that maybe I didn't account for. On the plus side, if Estonia and Greece perform similarly badly tomorrow my predicted non-top-10 finishes for them are nailed on for certain.

Anyway, enough for now, more reviews to come post-Grand Final!

==

* My 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 "2024 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, vocal performance on the night (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 any 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.