There are plenty of contestants from Eurovision 2014 who have a right to be irked by the results. France’s Twin Twin delivered an original performance and earned just two points in the final. Donatan & Cleo won the televote in several countries, only to be ranked last by the professional juries in those same markets. And Suzy, who brought some much-needed samba to the first semi-final following a series of ballads, missed out on the grand final by just one point. But in the end our readers decided that Israel’s Mei Finegold got the shortest end of the shortest stick, and have awarded her the 2014 Kate Ryan Award for Most Wronged.
Mei, a fan favourite, performed “Same Heart” with complete conviction. She sang a song driven by anger, and yet she never came off as angry. Instead empowerment and gurrrrl power ruled the day as Mei presented a woman taking charge of her life and transforming heartache into independence. She could have stood in place, but she chose to work every inch of both runways, assisted by two backing dancers. The transition at 1:10 to the Beyonce-esque dance moves is among the best things we have ever seen. And yet she still managed to come 14th out of 15 contestants in the second semi-final. Our jaws dropped, and are still bruised.
Kate Ryan Award for Most Wronged at ESC
1. Mei Finegold — Israel: 1,393 votes, 47.59%
2. Twin Twin — France: 392 votes, 13.39%
3. Donatan & Cleo — Poland: 384 votes, 13.12%
4. Suzy — Portugal: 307 votes, 10.49%
5. Tanja — Estonia: 298 votes, 10.18%
6. Tijana — FYR Macedonia: 153 votes, 5.23%
The Kate Ryan Award honours its Belgian namesake who, in 2006, failed to advance to the finals of Eurovision despite being one of the bookies’ favourites. Think Stella Mwangi, but with a proper singing voice. Kate’s song “Je t’adore” remains a staple of the Eurovision dancefloor.
This award is just one of a dozen that make up the 2014 Valentina Monetta Awards (VMAs). Our 12 categories—from best dressed to most most wronged at ESC—identify the contestants who left the biggest impression on Eurovision fans, regardless of whether they won the contest or not.
Last year’s winner was the Romanian opera star Cezar Ouatu, who came seventh with the public, but 24th with the jury.
With all due respect to Mei, but her Semi-Final performance was pretty awful. The stage performance itself wasn’t very well-choreographed and her vocals made her sound like a frog. In my opinion, “Same Heart” is a great song, but they had the opportunity to blow everyone out of the water with their stage performance — but they didn’t. Take a look at the split votes between the televoters and the jury… the results speak for themselves. The fanboys keep arguing that there was an injustice to Israel not qualifying, but the reality is that she sucked. Deal with it.
Wow … talking about obsessive subjects …. when one is too damn popular amongst fans it becomes this over the top storm of non-acceptance. Move on people … some people lose, some people win it’s part of the whole game. And it will always be like this. If you all really love this artist and her music, do yourselves a favour and ENJOY the music instead of crying for things that just didn’t happen.
Ireland and Israel should have qualified instead of Poland and Slovenia.
From Semi Final 1
Estonia and Moldova should have also made the final instead of San Marino and Azerbaijan. 😀
I voted for her. When they called out Austria as the last qualifier I didn’t know whether to feel happy; or distraught that I wasted €0,20. I loved all the non-qualifiers (although my favourite was Israel)
@realist
Almost every year someone from OGAE’s top 3 flops
(2014-Israel,2013-San Marino,2012-Iceland,2011-Hungary etc)
It wasn’t wronged, I was saying from the day that she was picked that she wasn’t cpqualifying and I was saying that this was going to be like San Marino 2013 and fail to qualify despite being a huge fan favourite, and everyone was like “Your crazy! You don’t know anything!” And were like “this is a different case” and who was right…. Um me 🙂 and infact she did way worse than San Marino. She was top 3 in the OGAE and then she couldn’t even make top 3 out if the 5 non qualifiers.
Actually it didn’t make it cause Israel hasn’t got block. But ofc “pro” jury’s bottom played an important role -.-
I was so shocked when I saw she wasn’t true, because Mei was a potential winner.
It’s funny how many people “can see why it didn’t qualify”. Everyone is a general after the battle is over. I think she really deserved to be in the final and together with Ireland and Estonia was most wronged.
I thought it was a pity she didn’t make it, but I think the Beyoncé effect was one of the reasons. Girls dancing in formation, we’ve seen it all before. None of the top four acts in the final featured any dancing at all and it in the fifth it was more acting than dancing.
Who else could’ve won it? It was fantastic. A great voice, a great song, a perfect performance. I can’t find one single drawback. I was shocked when she didn’t manage to sail through. She is my #3 this year and I voted for her in the semi. I was completely sure that she would do well. Still can’t find why this was ignored not only by the voters, but also by the jury.
Loved the video and song. Unfortunately Mei did not “fill” the stage. It felt empty.
To be honest I would have put Molly in this category. During rehearsals everyone was saying it was a winning performance, nothing went wrong on the night and only got 17th, what went wrong?
Mei’s song was a winner but her live vocals were not. And twin twin should not be that high. Same as Mei, song great, but the staging was irratic, and the vocals out of time and tune.
I feel you’ve wronged molly by not including her in the category.
Dear David. How can you say that the performance was “weird” and “average” at the same time??
Totally deserved award, MEI was the best and she deserved a spot in TOP 10 in the Grand Final.
Totally deserved winner. She had a Top 10 song and an excellent performance. How she didn’t progress still stuns me.