Thanks! I actually discovered that the music videos everyone posted a couple months ago aren’t geo-blocked like the competition seems to be. I know it’s not quite the same as the live shows, but I was mainly curious about the music.
My take: a lot of the music is just so… bland. Like, no offense intended, it’s just so bland. Most of what I listened to is stuff that sounds like top-10 American “”“Corpo-Pop”“”. I only got about 4-5 songs in before I started skipping to anything I’d heard about or looked interesting. That said…
Armenia/Ladaniva - I loved the blend of folk and pop that Armenia’s entry had. I don’t know if they qualified for the finals, but imo they should have. That said, I’d love to see Armenia dig System of a Down out of hiatus and send them to Eurovision. I know SoaD is technically American, but all the band members are Armenian. The big issue I can see, however, is that despite Serj’s insistance to the contrary, SoaD is a very political band and might refuse to participate simply because Armenia would have to muzzle them.
Australia/Electric Fields - probably should go back and give this a second try. I felt like it was going somewhere, but kind a lost interest halfway through. I’d love to see Australia field King Gizzard, but they’d probably have the same issue as Armenia would have with SoaD. I can’t really see King Gizzard being willingly muzzled. They might be able to talk them into something like 12 Bar Bruise though.
Croatia/Baby Lasagne - heh, Baby Lasagne is fun, plus he’s got a silly name.
Estonia/5MIINUST x Puuluup - Wasn’t a huge fan of this entry, but I still enjoyed it for the same reason I liked Armenia’s entry.
Finland/Windows95man - deserves to be in the top 3. While I didn’t feel like the music was that amazing, the stage show in the music video was 10/10.
Ireland/Bambie Thug - yeah. I like this. Not the music itself, but how “risky” it is compared to the other entries I listened to. I like that Ireland took a risk.
Netherlands/Joost Klein - I can’t decide if I like Joost’s Europapa or not, but I can tell why people liked it and the music video was great. The story behind it makes me really sad he was banned for such a minor thing. This might have been his only chance to really participate in Eurovision and he got banned for obvious bullshit.
There were others I listened to, but I just… they were just kinda meh. All-in-all, I was honestly hoping for stuff that was more unique and risky. Maybe I just got unlucky when I was skipping through stuff though. Also, Eurovision should loosen the “no politics” rule. Telling countries not to take shots at each other is reasonable. However, there’s a lot of “political” music that doesn’t specifically call any one country or culture out (like environmentally-focused stuff) which would probably be disqualified if it was written for Eurovision.