Eurovision: chart update

In 2000, Nicki French's Eurovision single peaked at #34 in the UK.

A year later, Lindsay D's entry peaked at #32.

What we've always been lacking is a UK Eurovision entry that peaks at #33.

Step forward, Molly Smitten-Downes!

The Common Linnets (The Netherlands) have the only other Eurovision song in today's UK Top 100. 'Calm After The Storm' is a new entry at #95, with sales up to midnight. However, it was second in

the UK televote (behind Poland) and we've gone mad for it since last night! Right now (21:45 on Sunday), it is sitting at #4 in the iTunes listings, with Conchita Wurst (third in our televote) only at #19. It looks like the most successful Eurovision hit this year may not be the actual winner or the UK entry, and that hasn't happened since....?

(That gives me a week to research it or for someone to provide the answer.)

In the compilation albums chart, the Eurovision album climbs 20 places to #19, just short of its peak on release, three weeks ago. This is its third week in the top 40 out of four, as it dropped out in its second week.

Photo of the day

Conchita Wurst and the Eurovision winner's trophy.
A very satisfactory result, from a very exciting, well-produced show last night.
I loved it - and had a very satisfying win of £125 for a £2.50 each way bet on Conchita, placed a month ago, when she was 40-1. Result!

Semi-final 2 - pointless predictions

I am, perhaps controversially, going to leave Israel off my list of predicted qualifiers for tonight. It's partly because I don't like it (which is possibly a stupid reason, but if I find it aggressive and unappealing, so will some others), partly because Israel have qualified four times and failed five times, so they're not a safe bet and partly because it's song #2, the slot of doom. So, I'm also ruling out Georgia (although it would be funny to see people's faces), Ireland (sorry), Belarus (3 out of 10 success rate) and Switzerland (2 qualifications out of 9 and not catchy enough).

My predicted ten qualifiers are therefore:

Malta
Norway
Poland
Austria
Lithuania (because UK and Ireland)
Finland
FYR Macedonia
Greece (7 qualifications, no fails. Probable 12 from UK tonight.)
Slovenia (only because it's near the end)
Romania (Also 7 successes and no fails.)

Let's see if that beats my 8/10 from Tuesday!

Radio 2 Eurovision

At 12:00 BST today, BBC Radio 2 will be launching its first ever Eurovision radio station. I'm very proud to say that I am one of the team contributing to the blog which goes alongside the DAB station. I even have a profile on the Radio 2 website - see below!

Radio 2 Eurovision is only on air for four days; from today until Sunday, so grab it while it lasts and #JoinUs on the blog for reviews, trivia and listener interaction. Rescan your digital radio and it will add Radio 2 Eurovision to your stations. (I've done it this morning - it works!) It's also online and has been added automatically to your BBC radio iplayer app, which you obviously have already...

Eurovision - days 5 and 6

Mollywatch

No update last night (Friday), as I was far too busy watching Molly's prerecorded appearance on The Graham Norton Show and drooling over James McAvoy and Hugh Jackman on the same programme.

Molly's 'Children Of The Universe' had at last begun to make progress on iTunes during the day on Friday. It cracked the top 100 in the 'almost real time' sales listings and was at #74 by mid afternoon. Last night's TV appearance (possibly assisted by yesterday's launch of the BBC's TV trailer for the Eurovision final too) has finally seen the single's sales take off. It has ended Saturday night at #32 for the single version, and the album version has reappeared at #146, after disappearing from the iTunes top 200 listing on Tuesday.

I'm writing this after midnight on Saturday, so we've passed the chart sales cut-off point for Sunday's official chart. We'll see tomorrow if this late surge has been enough for the song to crack the Official Chart top 100 and at least give Molly a chart position in advance of her Eurovision performance in seven days' time.

More urgently for Molly, today (Stars Wars day) sees her first rehearsal on the Copenhagen stage, so we'll at last get to see how it's being presented, what the stage backdrop is and how she and all the other vocalists sound together. Power to the people, or 'may the force be with you'.

The other five automatic finalists also have their first rehearsals on Sunday, so we may get to see if the EBU intends to make Germany look ridiculous, by insisting they caption their song (which should be 'Is It Right?') without the necessary question mark. Jon Ola Sand, Eurovision's Executive Supervisor, confirmed to me on twitter that the German delegation made that mistake when they submitted their entry. However, instead of just correcting it, they've printed the error on the official album. I won't be surprised if it's wrong on Germany's caption too. All over Europe, intelligent people will be saying, "That title's a question. Why have they missed off the question mark?" And then they will be talking and taking even less notice of the German song. That's something they can ill afford, because it's already one of the least arresting and least fancied songs anyway. We shall see.

Eurovision - day 4

The Eurovision organisers actually managed to schedule in a May Day break from rehearsals today, which is unusual and impressive, given that these rehearsals started no earlier than in recent years. I guess it's easier that we're down to 37 songs this year. We're a whole six songs down on just three years ago, which immediately means twelve fewer initial rehearsals, so the load is a little lighter for the technical crew than it was in Düsseldorf, Baku and Stockholm.

The main news from the EBU today was the release of ALL the names of the jurors, from all 37 countries. They announced earlier this year that they would be doing this, in an anti-corruption measure that should make jurors more accountable. In theory, that's a good idea, but I do worry that it will also lead to an increase in conservatism and 'safe' votes from jurors in some countries. Given that the homophobes in Russia are actively calling for Russia to pull out because they're afraid that the nation might be corrupted by seeing a drag artiste (even though they seemed to survive when Slovenia, Denmark and Ukraine all did the same in recent years), this is a concern. Can you imagine the reaction that a Russian juror might get at home if they actually give points to Austria's Conchita Wurst? Based on the quality of the song, and Conchita's stunning vocal ability, it really should be picking up jury points all over the place. It will be interesting to see where the gaps are, after the contest, and this will be possible, because the individual jurors' votes will eventually be revealed, not just the juries' combined votes, so there will be no hiding behind the rest of the team.

Whether or note these changes will put an end to some of the (ahem) 'anomalies' in recent Eurovision scoring, such as Malta giving 12 points to Azerbaijan on five of their last six opportunities (and 10 points the other time), remains to be seen.

There are some famous names amongst the 185 people on the juries, including lots of previous performers. The chair (or should that be 'stool'?) of the UK jury is vocal coach and TV regular Carrie Grant (age 48), who was in Sweet Dreams for the UK in 1983.

The other UK jurors are:
Stephen Allen (age 48); music producer, keyboard player, musical director, arranger.
Candice McKenzie (age 31); DJ and event producer.
Gus Gowland (age 32); writer, actor and composer.
Laura Wright (age 23); Mezzo soprano singer, signed to Decca/Universal.

Kudos to the BBC for choosing two people who know a thing or two about singing ability, for choosing a 23 year-old and for having a majority of women on the jury. At least we've done our bit, because the overall representation of women across the juries (which are supposed to be 'representative', according to the tightened rules) is pretty poor, with only 42.7 % female jurors and 57.3 % male.  The population of Europe is 51.8% female, so this is hardly representative.


Mollywatch

Adopting a 'glass half full' mentality, there are grounds for optimism today, as Molly's rate of climb on iTunes has increased. But she still hasn't cracked the top 100, ending the day at #103 on the real time sales listings; nine places higher than yesterday. She is getting a lot of airplay on Radio2, but it doesn't seem to be translating into sales. I've heard the song played by Ken Bruce, Paddy Kielty and Simon Mayo this week. Molly is on the Graham Norton TV show tomorrow (Friday), with a performance that was recorded at the start of April. Let's hope it sees a boost in sales.

Eurovision - day 3

Mollywatch

'Children Of The Universe' ended Wednesday at #112 on the iTunes listing.
It's climbing, but at a snail's pace; up just four places in 24 hours.

My ranking of this year's songs.

Thanks to a very clever, easy-to-use little sorting program at gerbear.com, I now have a list of this year's Eurovision songs in my personal order of preference. It's very accurate and took less than ten minutes. So here they are.