Eurovision 2025: reviews of Semi-Final casualties

Eurovision week has been and gone, and by this point, most of the commentary has understandably been focussing on the... shall we say... nailbiting Grand Final results. However in the week before that, eleven entrants were knocked out in the Semi Finals that took place on the 13th and 15th of May, some of them very unexpectedly indeed. So let's take a look at how their live performances went and whether they deserved being kicked out.

Here's a quick recap of my scoring system in 2 parts: first for the song composition itself, incorporating the studio recording. This will be the same as my initial (p)review scoring unless something drastic has changed to the recording used for playback.

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 "2025 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 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.

Semi-Final 1 non-qualifiers:

Slovenia: Klemen - "How Much Time Do We Have Left?" 😮😮😮

Nothing about this performance in the 1st Semi Final changed my opinion about the composition, namely that it's about as boring as it's possible to be while still being recognisable as a song. Nevertheless, Klemen appears to have taken singing lessons since his national final performance, where he sounded quite plain and, in hindsight, oddly emotionless. In Basel, though, his vocals actually sounded focussed and purposeful at the important moments, with no discernable errors either. Good job Klemen, you can definitely make a career as a singer, but as a composer and lyricist... maybe less so.

One serious point, though: I found the lyrics emotionally manipulative anyway, even when I thought that Klemen's wife was still expected to die from her cancer. But discovering that she has apparently recovered totally is conflicting: obviously it is fantastic news. However, singing about admiring her "ability to heal" feels very close to new age, vibration-manifesting, toxic positivity nonsense that ignores the sheer luck involved in beating a Stage 4 cancer. Some people do spontaneously go into remission from a cancer that was originally predicted to kill them, but the percentages are not high, and for many cancer types, and especially without modern, evidence-based treatment, the numbers are truly tiny. Maybe it's because I recently watched Apple Cider Vinegar on Netflix, but it occurred to me that there's a non-zero chance that this song might actually encourage a cancer patient not to treat their condition properly, instead trusting in their own "ability to heal". I sincerely hope that isn't the case.

Azerbaijan: Mamagama - "Run With U" ★😮

There were certainly some unkind words on social media commenting on lead singer Asaf's vocal quality during this performance, mainly commenting on the perceived mismatch between his straightforwardly masculine appearance and his airy, floaty falsetto voice quality in this song. Those comments are ignorant and prejudiced and I need only to point out that similar vocal styles, like those typically used by singers such as Curtis Mayfield and Michael Jackson, have been considered perfectly acceptable in mainstream culture. What I can't ignore is the dodgy tuning on quite a few notes (mainly on the sharp side) which showed that Asaf wasn't in Mayfield or Jackson's league when it came to controlling his falsetto delivery. This wasn't a total waste of time though: I still appreciated the song and the vocals had no glaring errors. I didn't even think the staging was that bad (although I'll admit I'm in opposition to lots of commentators on this issue!). Mamagama deserved to be knocked out but they didn't embarrass themselves either.

Belgium: Red Sebastian - "Strobe Lights" ★★😮😮

Here's our first shock non-qualifier. Neither I nor the armada of online Eurovision commentators had genuinely considered that this might not qualify, but the voting public obviously weren't drawn to the song in enough numbers to save it. Who knows what the reasons were, but perhaps I'm in a minority, appreciating as I do the intense pounding techno feel of this track from start to finish. Red Sebastian's high notes were fantastically intense, but I felt a little let down by the breathiness and lack of control in his lower register. At those lower pitches he sounded much less focussed and not perfectly in tune either. However, with no stand-out errors and some very impressive G5 pitches, he still gains 2 sing-y faces from me.

Croatia: Artist - "Poison Cake" ★😮😮

Marko's performance here is another example of improvement between national finals and Eurovision itself. The song is still a bit of a disjointed mess, but Marko performed accurately and made the best out the material he had to work with. Another understandable non-qualifier who nevertheless doesn't need to feel bad about their performance.

Cyprus: Theo Evan - "Ssh" ★

I get the feeling that the Cypriot delegation got carried away overthinking their staging concept (scaffolding in two parts that is constantly and creatively being moved around, climbed on and hung off) and kind of forgot that this is a *song* contest where somebody actually has to concentrate on *singing*. Theo Evan had no total vocal disasters that stood out, but his voice control was consistently poor overall, struggling to stay in tune for just about everything he had to sing. There was also a "big note" towards the end where he just didn't pump enough air through or sustain the sound, which came over as weak. Possibly because of these vocal weaknesses, I get the feeling that the backing track was being relied on to partially swamp Theo's voice, volume-wise. A deserved knock out, and though I can't prove it because I didn't write a predictions post, I predicted this non-qualification too. Also I am still nursing a grudge that Cyprus promised us an answer to a riddle and we got an answer that made no sense!

Semi-Final 2 non-qualifiers:

Serbia: Princ - "Mila" 😮😮😮

An excellent vocal performance here: beautiful yet focussed sound quality, in time, in tune, and with artistic ebb and flow throughout. It's only a shame that the composition itself hasn't magically become less boring. There's a genre of YouTube comments along the lines of "I can't believe this didn't qualify! The performance was excellent and people have no taste!". My response to that is simple: Mila is a dull ballad that can't really be saved by excellent vocals, especially if its more interesting competitors are also performed by excellent vocalists. Honestly, why does anyone even bother composing stuff like Mila in the first place, never mind sending it to the world's largest music contest? Just one unexpected chord, one interesting twist in the melody line, literally any rhythmic interest at all... that's all I'm asking! Anyway, enough ranting. Great job, Princ, now go and find some better songs to sing.

Australia: Go-Jo - "Milkshake Man" ★★😮

More shock NQs! Absolutely nobody (myself included) expected Australia to be booted out in the Semis this year. I still think this is a really well-produced, dynamic and fun song, and though I didn't think Go-Jo's showed off his voice particularly well, it's not exactly a song that relies on a perfectly crafted vocal timbre. There's lots of spoken word and the main point of this performance is its enthusiastic weirdness, which I thought Go-Jo judged pretty well.

 

This year I organised a Grand Final watch party for some friends who wouldn't normally watch Eurovision and I screened the knocked-out Semi Final acts in the run-up. Milkshake Man was their favourite by a large margin - all through the actual Grand Final there were multiple comments along the lines of "This is in the final but the Milkshake Man isn't? What?". I absolutely agree: this for me is the most undeserved Semi Final non-qualifier of the year.

Montenegro: Nina Žižić - "Dobrodošli" ★😮😮

This non-qualification was entirely expected by me and many others, but Nina deserves plenty of credit for delivering this tastefully. Had she not experienced a couple of vocal cracks that betrayed a slight loss of tonal control, I'd say she deserved 3 sing-y faces. (Note that this entry was re-uploaded on the ESC YouTube channel using footage from the jury show that didn't include those vocal cracks - I promise you I'm not making this up!) Nevertheless, even these cracked notes were basically in tune and, given the subject matter of the song, actually quite apt. Standing alone on such a huge stage to sing about violence against women is no small thing, and Nina rose to the task. I also should point out that since my first review early on in January, the backing track had been re-done with a grand orchestral introduction and overall sounded significantly less dull. Not quite enough to get me to put it on my playlist, but worth a mention in any case.

Ireland: Emmy - "Laika Party" ★😮😮

I was a little sad to see this go, even though it didn't make my playlist this year. I was also out of step with the many commentators who predicted that this would fail to qualify - I had reckoned that Emmy would fulfil a similar role as Væb did in the 1st Semi Final, and collect a decent amount of televotes from people supporting a fun, energetic and slightly odd song. Well, what do I know? This finished 13th out of 16, only breaking a 3-way tie with Georgia and Serbia because it received points from a greater number of countries. Emmy's voice during her verses had an odd combination of breathiness and vibrato, but I thought that actually suited the song quite well. She also provided a contrast by using a much fuller tone during the choruses. This was a perfectly decent job, in particular the tasteful execution of the final key change.

Czechia: Adonxs - "Kiss Kiss Goodbye" ★😮

To some, this was a surprise non-qualifier. I never really saw what reason the public would have had to vote for this in the first place, and hence this result felt deserved. Adonxs's vocal delivery was generally solid, with a couple of slight errors in pitching in falsetto range, and one glaring mistake: a late pick up to start a chorus, meaning "Kiss Kiss Good..." had to be shoehorned in in a rush. Just like Nina Žižić's corrected vocal cracks, you'll find the uploaded version of this performance has that glaring mistake corrected using previously-recorded audio. Since I first reviewed this song, it had a short up-tempo dance break added which many people found incongruous. However, I appreciate it as one of the very few interesting things about the composition.

Georgia: Mariam Shengelia - "Freedom" ★★😮😮😮

This is a contender for my personal Most Robbed award this year. As I said in my initial review, there are multiple interesting aspects to the musical composition (even if the lyrics seem to get worse every time I read them!). To my great satisfaction, Mariam really knocked this out of the park live, swapping beautifully between a slightly breathy tone for the free tempo sections, and proper full-on belt for the choruses. She wasn't terribly well rewarded for all this effort though and hence ends up on this list of final miss-outers. (Look, if Parg from Armenia can be a stay-aliver, Mariam can be a miss-outer 😉). I keep coming back to an idea I posted on the Overthinking It Discord server:

"... I also find it fascinating that it's arguably the perfect embodiment of what many people *say* they want at Eurovision (UNESCO-recognised traditional dance blended interestingly with modern sounds and staging, national language mixed with English, weird and original musical twists), and yet of course the political background is unavoidable. ... Also forgot: excellent vocal performer too ..."

Matt Belinkie adapted this idea slightly to finish off this Overthinking It segment on Georgia. Even though the politically-motivated antipathy to this entry is understandable, I still feel sad that such an interesting composition and skilled performer can attract so much non-political antipathy and do so poorly in the competition. It's weirdly alienating to discover that something you really find interesting and engaging is considered by many to be "boring" or "messy". But that's how musical taste goes, I suppose, and the world would be pretty awful if we all liked and admired the same things in art!

Researching this entry for the Overthinging It YouTube channel was one of my highlights of this season. Aside from getting to do some fascinating musical analysis involving my favourite kind of chord (9th chords), I was privileged to get sight of an explanation of the song directly from its composer Keti Gabisiani, who explained about the Khorumi dance amongst other things. Keti's words aren't mine to share here, but being part of that process and seeing the results up on YouTube is a great feeling. The duo of Matts (Belinkie and Wrather) really have set up a great community dedicated to saying enlightening and interesting things about Eurovision and all its attendant culture. I liked their channel before, and I love it even more now!

11 down, 26 Grand Finalists to go...

I'm not sure which order I'll cover the Grand Final songs in, but watch this space... I'll definitely review all 26 performances and probably separately I'll do a round-up of the whole Eurovision 2025 season. I'll also try and get that all finished before the 2026 season begins (unlike last time!).