After the first semi-final of the Eurovision Song Contest, ten other finalists have been chosen alongside the “Big Five” and hosts Sweden.
This year’s Eurovision Song Contest in Malmö, Sweden started its hot phase on Tuesday evening with the first semi-final. On May 7th, 15 of the participating countries that were not seeded for Saturday’s final competed to secure one of the coveted places. In addition, due to a new regulation, Germany was also allowed to appear, which is already seeded for the final as a member of the so-called “Big Five” alongside France, Great Britain, Italy and Spain as well as the host country. So which acts will be on stage alongside the countries mentioned at the finale on Saturday?
Performance art and hard sounds
The first act on Tuesday was Silia Kapsis, 17, with “Liar” for Cyprus, followed by Teya Dora, 32, with “Ramonda” for Serbia and Silvester Belt, 26, with “Luktelk” for Lithuania. The non-binary act Bambie Thug, 31, then put on a devilishly exciting performance with “Doomsday Blue” for Ireland. Described, among other things, as a mixture of late-night goth pop and confrontational performance art, the audience was certainly treated to one of the most unusual shows that could be seen at the ESC in recent years.
Alyona Alyona, 32, and Jerry Heil, 28, sang “Teresa & Maria” for Ukraine and Luna, 24, performed “The Tower” for Poland. Afterwards, one of this year’s favorites rocked the hall in Malmö: Baby Lasagna, 28, who represents Croatia with “Rim Tim Tagi Dim”. Hera Björk, 52, brought ESC experience to the stage with “Scared of Heights” for Iceland, as she had already competed for the country in the Eurovision Song Contest in 2010.
Raiven, 28, then entered the race for Slovenia with “Veronika” and Windows95man, 38, apparently didn’t want to follow any rules with his comedic appearance. For Finland he jumped around the stage to “No Rules” mostly without pants. This was followed by Natalia Barbu, 44, with “In The Middle” for Moldova, Fahree, 29, and Ilkin Dovlatov, 33, with “Özünlə Apar” for Azerbaijan, Electric Fields for Australia with “One Milkali”, Iolanda, 29, completely in White with “Grito” for Portugal and most recently the singer Tali, 23, who represented Luxembourg, which was taking part again for the first time in 31 years, with “Fighter”.
As a little breather, Olly Alexander, 33, who is representing Great Britain, was allowed to sing the song “Dizzy” in between. For the first time, the aforementioned “Big Five” and the host will introduce their artists live to the audience over the two semi-finals. Later it was Germany and Sweden’s turn in the first semi-final.
The Norwegian twins Marcus and Martinus, who competed for the host country, sang their song “Unforgettable” – and presented themselves as “the Swedish Lochis”, like Thorsten Schorn, 48, on his debut as German ESC commentator and successor to Peter Urban, 76, joked. In addition to a burning garbage can and a later fire show, Isaak, 29, presented his song “Always On The Run”. Hopefully the former is not a bad omen for the upcoming final, as Germany has notoriously performed quite poorly in the competition in recent years.
These are the finalists
German spectators were entitled to vote in the first semi-final, in which only the audience decided who would advance. At the end of the show it was clear that the entries from Serbia, Portugal, Slovenia, Ukraine, Lithuania, Finland, Cyprus, Croatia, Ireland and Luxembourg would advance to the final round. Next are Baby Lasagna, Teya Dora, Iolanda, Silvester Belt, Silia Kapsis, Raiven, Bambie Thug, Tali, Alyona Alyona and Jerry Heil as well as the Windows95man. Moldova, Iceland, Australia, Poland and Azerbaijan are eliminated.
In the second semi-final, 16 other participating countries will fight live on May 9th from 9:00 p.m. (on ONE and in the ARD media library) for one of the remaining ten places for the grand finale on May 11th. This can also be seen live on Das Erste and in the media library at 9 p.m.