The first semi-final, which took place on Tuesday, was not broadcast in Poland. I guess since the Polish song competes tonight in the second part, TVP1 (Polish TV, channel 1) didn’t see any reason to show it. They showed re-runs of “Heroes” instead.

Well, tonight is the night. The Polish song “I Don’t Wanna Leave” is not utterly hideous, but it’s nothing exceptional either. The singer, Lidia Kopania is a pretty girl, she sings alright, so we’ll see what happens. Anything would be an improvement over the horror of last year’s Isis whatsherface performance.

The show has just begun and I’m planning to blog it for you live. 🙂

Croatia goes first, Poland has number 5. OK, here we go!

I have listened to all the songs in this year’s contest, and my favorites are: Iceland and Azerbaijan. Iceland qualified to the final, and we will find out about Azerbaijan tonight.

After Croatia (sappy Balkan flavored ballad) we have Ireland. The all-girl band sounds like a poor imitation of Sahara Hotnights. With apologies to my Irish readers, but while this is better than the singing chicken you guys sent last year, this is not really a song that people in the donkey cart countries will vote for.

Latvia, oh no… a dreadful Russian-language macabre sung by a guy who thinks he’s either Mika or Anthony Keidis. Exactly the type of song that will get through to the final.

Serbia – the tile of the song is “Cipela” which brings some very weird thoughts to the Polish-speaking part of my mind. OK, what do we have? An accordion? Check. Guys in wigs? Check. Goofy dancing? Check. Some kind of very strange cabaret? Check. Definitely a Eurovision final material.

Ok, Poland. Lidia Kopania. Ay, Lidia, Mariah Carey you’re not, that’s for sure… But Lidia looked beautiful and it wasn’t a bad performance at all.

I can’t find the semi-final version on the internet yet, so instead, take a look at the official music video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOVmrNaLDT8

Norway… supposedly, this is one of the songs that people bet will win this whole thing. I don’t know… It’s catchy all right, schmaltzy enough, there are fiddles (a Eurovision winner must have fiddles). So, yes it is possible.

More sappy ballads sung with feeling, a lot of feeling, and high notes, a lot of high notes. Which the girl from Slovakia couldn’t quite hit.

Ooohhhh…. Slovenia… Four good-looking guys playing string instruments. And oh yeah, some woman singing.

Hungary… hmmm… what can I say here… Not much that can be published on a PG-13 blog.

Now my beloved Azerbaijan. I like Arash, even though he’s pathetic live. (Yes, I have actually seen Arash play live, more than once even.)

And with this shameful admission, I think I’m going to skip a whole bunch of songs now and return for the results…

Yes, the results… This semi-final was all kinds of sad and bad, and I am reasonably certain that Poland will not qualify to the final.

And the countries we will see on Saturday are (in no particular order):

• Azerbaijan!!! (woot woot!!)
• Croatia
• Ukraine
• Lithuania
• Albania (Europe, you can’t be serious)
• Moldova
• Denmark
• Estonia
• Norway
• Greece

And sorry, Poland didn’t make it to the final. Oh well… why am I not surprised?