Introducing wiwivision 2015: Our alternative song contest

Post Eurovision depression – it’s a bitch! Eurovision was a month ago (*sob*), the next national final won’t be until at least November (*wail*) and Junior Eurovision is still months away (*wah*). And believe us, the team at wiwibloggs are suffering from it just as much as the rest of y’all. But moping is soooo not our style. We’ve decided to shake off the fug and create our own contest. Readers, welcome to the inaugural wiwivision – our alternative song contest.

wiwivision 2015 Trailer

In the lead-up to the real thing, everyone on the team analyses all the entries in minute detail. We scoff at song choices, we bemoan the chosen singers and tear-apart staging decisions. So wouldn’t it be fun if the tables were turned? Well now they are. Our correspondents have each adopted a country and selected a hypothetical entry for the song contest. In a bid to maintain some degree of reality, we’re going to keep the structure used by the EBU in 2015 – the same 40 countries, two semi finals from which ten songs will qualify and one grand final with the twenty qualifiers plus seven automatic qualifiers. Essentially, we’ll be reliving Eurovision 2015 but with our own personal song choices.

Entries

To make things interesting we’ve banned past Eurovision and national final entrants, in so far as possible. We want to go on a new musical journey, and hopefully y’all will hop on for the ride. Each act must have some connection to the country they’re representing, although we’re allowing certain countries to borrow from their neighbours (hi San Marino). When it comes to song selection, we’re a tad more flexible than the EBU. Songs must be original, but we’ve scrapped the three minute rule and the window within which songs must be released is 1 June 2014 to 31 May 2015. Basically, we’ve a year’s worth of great music to choose from. There’s no excuse for us to mess up, but y’all should totally judge us if we do… otherwise we’ll be judging you!

Voting

Obviously, we have neither the means nor infrastructure to replicate the voting model used at Eurovision. Instead we’re going to do like Sweden’s Melodifestivalen – the juries (i.e. wiwibloggs correspondents) will give their points in the same manner as at the song contest, and then the public vote will be added on at the end. And this is where y’all come into the equation. There will be reader polls for both semis and the grand final. The results from these polls will account for 50% of the total vote, with the Wiwi Jury accounting for the remainder. To paraphrase Queen Loreen – you got the power!

Launch Dates

For those of you wetting yourselves with excitement, stay calm. We’re launching the first semi-final tomorrow. The second semi final will follow two days later, on Thursday. And we’ll reveal the automatic qualifiers on Friday. The date of the grand final has yet to be confirmed. Forty songs will battle it out for your votes, whilst the members of wiwibloggs watch tentatively as y’all rip into our selections – should be fun!

Follow all the wiwivision action here