Call the police! The Eurovision 2016 Grand Final was filled with some major musical misdemeanours and we’re looking for justice. Many Eurovision fans are still wondering why fan favourites such as Iceland and Norway failed to qualify, but let’s take a look at some of the biggest crimes of the Grand Final itself.
1. Czech Republic receives nil points in the televote
The first — and arguably biggest — crime of the Grand Final is the Czech Republic receiving nil points from the televote. The Czech Republic qualified for the first time ever and accrued a respectable 41 points from the juries. Then, just like that, we found out that the televoters of Europe and Australia didn’t even have a single point for Gabriela. It’s time to bring out the handcuffs.
2. Malta drops out of the Top 10 after the televote
Malta’s Ira Losco returned to Eurovision 14 years after finishing second behind Marie N. After spending much of the week as an outside favourite, things were looking up for the mother-to-be as she finished fourth with the juries, seven points clear of hot favourite Sergey Lazarev. As the televote results were revealed, Malta were given a measly 16 points, sending them from fourth to twelfth. Clearly the people of Europe think that Ira Losco can’t walk on water after all but I’m still adamant that she can.
3. Barei places even worse than Edurne for Spain
Once again, Spain entered the contest with a song that was wildly popular among fans. And once again, that song couldn’t even crack the Top 20. Just like Edurne last year, Barei did not receive the result most fans expected. In fact, she couldn’t even improve on Edurne’s 21st place result, despite gaining huge momentum with bookies while Europe voted. Europe, we want to know why you were saying nay to this one.
4. Serbia only manages to finish 18th
Many people were comparing the end of Sanja Vucic’s song “Goodbye (Shelter)” to Eurovision 2007 winner Marija Serifovic. Her performance was packed with emotion, captivating staging and that powerful conclusion. However, Serbia barely qualified and only finished 18th in the final. Was Sanja drowned out in a sea of female ballads or was this the most sinister crime of the contest yet?
5. Bulgaria doesn’t crack the Top 3
Bulgarian fans will undoubtedly be thrilled with Poli Genova’s result — the country’s best finish ever. Amidst a Top 10 containing holograms, ballads with incredible vocals and plenty of slick staging, Poli proved that you need nothing more than an amazing song and a chicken dance to do well at Eurovision. Bulgaria’s result is an incredible one, but Poli would have been very worthy of a Top 3 finish. Perhaps love was a crime after all.
Do you agree that these crimes deserve some serious punishment? What are your biggest crimes of the Eurovision 2016 Grand Final? Let us know in the comments below.
It’s going to be end of mine day, but before end I am reading this wonderful paragraph to
improve my knowledge.
The 0 to Czech Republic is a proof that Televote cannot be the only criteria to choose the winner. So now it comes that a song with horrible vocals but lovely dancers or flash lights is better than a perfectly performed song? Australia should have won, but since still some conservative eurovision fans, take them like intruders in their party, she failed to defeat easily the Ukrainian song. Spain and UK what were you expecting? (You and France -excepting Patricia Kaas and this year- & Germany) always send 3rd or 4th category singers to compete against the best of the… Read more »
1. Agree, Gabriela deserved more love. At least 1 point! haha 2. Honestly and for as much as I loved the studio version, the live performance and staging was overall underwhelming, not bad, but nothing impressive either. I agree with the outcome. 3. Similar to Malta but on the contrary, I never liked the song that much, but the overall performance was better than I was expecting. I think Barei deserved better than what she got, but nothing above 15th or so… and so did Edurne, now that we’re at it 😛 4. This is the one I can totally… Read more »
Crime is the fact that a country like Malta will never get anywhere near top 5 with a song like Russia’s but Russia will be top 5 with a song like Maltas.
Crime is that Cyprus song is 21st. 20 songs better than that? No way
Crime is that Eurovision formula will change now. Good performances and good voices to satisfy the jury but poor songs.
russia got robbed again just like that time with tattoo performers, but that time they got the info from the phone companies and fired director of eurovision. and it keeps on happening, hahaha………they only let conchitas win at that freak show, or some tatar lady which somehow represented ukraine)))))))) funny
Biggest crimes for me were:
4) The jury’s disapproval of Poland
3) Belgium scoring so high
2) Croatia, Cyprus, Spain should be higher
1) Hungary should be in the top ten, ESPECIALLY AFTER FREDDIE CAME FOURTH IN THE SEMI FINAL 1! His song was awesome but the jury didn’t seem to like it. And although it was kinda popular to the public, that public preferred to vote for the big favori’s like Ukraine, Australia, Russia etc (as if those countries wouldn’t get enough votes to come to the top five already)
also, what you mentioned abiut Czech Republic.
UK being snubbed from the Top 10 would be one. Next to 2014, 2016 was arguably UK’s best entry since 2010 and they should have cracked into the Top 10. Bookies and fans alike had optimism for UK ranking higher (at least Top 20) this year but no – this year’s results happened and they’re still stuck in the right side of the scoreboard.
I agree for Czechia – it was really sad people did not give some points. I don’t agree for Malta and Bulgaria. First song is REALLY nothing special. Walk on water is simply generic song which won’t become hit or something. It has no potentional for top10. Bulgaria on other hand was great, but complaining about 4th place is just wrong. I liked, didn’t loved Serbia and Spain. They could go higher, yes. I think real crimes are (including Czechia): Croatia being so low (F U Europe!) , Lithuania and Poland being so high (still cannot understand that jury voted… Read more »
Germany entry was really great!!!
Which of the song is stuck in your minds? Which one you are humming?
I bet for Bulgaria 🙂
Australia had the best voice performance but I can’t remember it already.
It’s hard for me to call any result a crime given that, to my surprise, the grand final actually turned out to be a strong set of entries. The right songs qualified from the semis (well, mostly), and with so many good songs in the final, some of them just got crowded out unfortunately.
Extra crimes: 1. Belgium’s 1971 bad workout song qualified and was on the left side of the board 2. Germany gets last place… Again 3. Is Sergey’s televote win being take away worth a jail sentence? I know ESC hosted by Russia sounds like a nightmare, but the millions of televoters did like his song best. He wasn’t even runner up… It’s kinda like Il Volo if Il Volo had been under a fairer system and Italy had a terrible government. I actually thought Malta’s song was overrated. It’s good, but not top five material. I think I gave it… Read more »
Gosh. This is way too pathetic. What are you guys whining about? It could have been much worse than what you got. And I mean all of you in case you’re not from Germany. And before you say anything now – I’d like to remind you of last year. We got it two times in a row. Life goes on. See you next year (probably).
I think the comments here and elsewhere really show the fundemental flaw in the whole Eurovision project, which is music, by its very nature, is subjective. I hated the Polish song. Not because I have anything against Poland. It seems a lovely country and the Poles I’ve met are lovely too. The song, in my opinion was rubbish. And that’s exactly the point. Everyone will feel unhappy at every result as they have different musical tastes. Different countries and ethnicities have different tastes. The ethnic aspects of ‘1944’ (the kind of wailing notes) put my ears on edge! However, as… Read more »
‘Pride, it doesn’t matter whose wrong or right”… (Grace Jones)
http://www.logotv.com
(The Israeli Adam Lambert…OMG)
Here is an interesting reading from the perspective of Yahoo! Music’s managing editor (an American) where she lists her top 11 favorites. She ranked Bulgaria third, but the other songs from Serbia, Malta, Czechia and Spain never made it on her list. https://www.yahoo.com/music/the-winning-est-wildest-and-weirdest-moments-of-231818068.html I thought that Sanja’s camera angle shots weren’t flattering as she tended to make exaggerated facial grimaces that made her look ominous. Her zena-the-warrior outfit didn’t feel right for the song’s subject matter. I absolutely adore this power ballad nonetheless. Malta’s ‘Walk on Water’ sounded like a very slick and contemporary production with a rich sound and… Read more »
I agree with most of your top 5 crimes (except for the one about Bulgaria, they were amazing but the final top 3 were the clear top 3 in my opinion).
But for me, the biggest crime was 11 points from the televote to Israel, I seriously can’t understand what happened there.
It’s funny that you’d write about something that you certainly have no clue about. Saying that polish people live all around Europe and that is a reason why they got a lot of votes is ridiculous due to the fact they influenced it so much reflects the idea how uneducated people are on the subject. It’s so sad you can’t appreciate someones voice. Michal is very talented and he should be appreciated for that. Eurovision is a singing contest hence if people like the song they can vote for whoever they want. It’s just a shame that people are so… Read more »
Eurovision always manages to produce some laughable results, but the one that takes the cake this year has to be Estonia finishing 42nd, dead last overall, if you take into account the points each non-qualifying country received in its semi. That includes finishing dead last in the jury ranking of the 1st semi, behind entries like Moldova or San Marino… Also have to mention Lithuania’s generic pop crap finishing the final as high as 9th, including 12th with juries, and Azerbaijan, 6th (!) with juries in the semi and 17th overall in the final… So much for these so-called “professional’… Read more »
It’s easy to talk after everything.
The truth is that Barei was amazing. My mom texted me during the performance with “I like this one the best”.
The thing with Say Yay is that we had plenty of choices in the category. People probably went with Bulgaria. That doesn’t mean there was something wrong with her. Just that we liked Bulgaria a bit better.
Now, you have Georgia that did great but was actually worse than many that it left behind. Why? Because it was alone it its genre. The votes accumulated, instead of dispersing.
The ceiling of the global arena almost fell down with Barei’s performance, everybody singing and dancing. After the performance, Spain shortened from 18th to 4th in just 10 minutes as they saw it could be a potencial winner. On the contrary, the televote awarded Spain with the worst televote ever. Something wrong is going on in here.
The ceiling of the global arena almost fell down with Barei’s performance, everybody singing and dancing. After the performance, Spain shortened from 18th to 4th in just 10 minutes as they saw it could be a potencial winner. On the contrary, the televote awarded Spain with the worst televote ever. Something wrong is going on un here.
Czech Republic really deserved more in the televote…. I mean 0 is so brutal and I felt bad for Gabriela. Malta on the other hand was overrated by the juries across Europe…. I love the studio version but the song didn’t pop at all. Barei’s song was catchy but I could never take it seriously…. The verses were great but the rest was just annoying I believe that it was very lyrically poor. She deserved to be in the top 20 tho. But still not too far away from what she deserved based on the performance and song. Edurne was… Read more »
Spain placing 22nd is not a crime (making me listen to that noise of a song was). Where are the people who predicted that Barei was the next Michael Jackson? Where are the ones saying that “finally” ditching their national language would solve all the problems. Now you’ll probably see what the problem was: the song. It’s always about the song and the performance. The performance was actually good, but the song was just a soulless cheap copycat of Heroes with meaningless lyrics. Placing in the bottom 5 was everything but a surprise. I’ve lived two years in Spain, it’s… Read more »
Spanish fans overrated SAY YAY. It’s just a very silly song. Say yay? I mean… come on! The verses were going on and on and on and then the chorus was just ridiculous.. say yayayayay… sayyayyaya.. sayayayay is that a chorus? Sorry, well deserved place.
BULGARIA and AUSTRALIA are the real WINNERS this year. Thir songs are hitting the music charts already
Ukriane played the political card
Russia had outdated song with last year staging
I am sad that my country Netherlands came ?11 and it is not in TOP10
Srsly number 5 isn’t a crime that song was overhyped, because as much as I love poli she didn’t belonged to the top 5 and she finished 4th, how is that a crime. Perhaps you should shut up your biased mouth because that wasn’t a crime at all. What happened to Russia is a CRIME, I’m so happy Ukraine won but being real Sergey got 0 from half the jury, HOW THE F IS THAT FAIR? srsly people from the jury, imma quote Samra on this matter saying “Eurovision is a song contest so it’s all about the music” stop… Read more »
What happened with Barei!! this is the most shocking result from these 5 crimes of the Final, the song made such a positiv spirit which I hope to hear in the discos this summer, even in my country.
uhmm lighthouse finishing 23rd was a biggr crime than any of the ones you listed, wiwibloggs!
the song got so few jury points it’s unbelieveable.
overall the jury concvept is needed but it does need to be reformed indeed: it needs to have more people and they need to be voting on the same damn night as televoters.
There 5 are hardly crimes.
It is unfortunate that the Czech Republc didn’t get any televotes & that Serbia & Spain didn’t do better, but there was strong competition.
Bulgaria came 4th. Why did it have to be Top 3?
Finally Malta’s staging was terrible. They had a brilliant song & singer but didn’t try when it came to staging.
Barei did a great job during the last three months and last night she was crying after the concert and she is blaming himself the defeat. She was the most applauded by the public yesterday, Barei didn’t deserve this. We are very angry, all spaniards are collecting signatures to stop participating Spain in Eurovision. Every year we send very good songs and singers to Eurovision like Pastora Soler, Ruth Lorenzo, Edurne, Diges and Barei. And all songs end in the last positions. Everything in this contest is political and money now. Spain must leave the festival. We can also send… Read more »
Okey. People from jury should vote for Serbia. Serbian song have a stong message. This means that Europe aprooved violence against women. So sad.
I dont get me wrong. Ukraine is good, and Australia, but anyway this year Serbia should be at least top 8.
What happened this year with our candidacy is SO STRANGE. What europeans don’t know is that after winning the national final, Barei quickly opened a suggestions e-mail box for people (professionals or Eurovision fans) to send ideas for our scenography. Anybody could suggest its idea. This never happened before, so lots of us were expecting a great staging this year. Go figure how many different ideas she received in these 3 months. Some good ones, othes not so good…but sure she had some ambitious ones. When the first rehearsals were revealed, lots of people in Spain could not believe what… Read more »
THE UK DESERVED A MUCH BETTER SCORE – 2016 AND POLITICS IS STILL MORE THAN MUSIC – GREAT JOB GUYS, AT LEAST THIS YEAR WE CAN STILL BE PROUD, AND HOLD OUR HEADS UP HIGH.
You can’t beat politics –
Every year same countires are pushed so hard in juries voting Sweden,Ukraine,Malta,Israel,Azerbaijan from 2014/15 in that group joined The Netherlands and Belgium and from 2015 Australia
Only result in televote with I don t angry this year is 0 point to Czech Republic.
Many result in juries voting with I don t agry this year overrated Austrlia with 320 points, Ukraine with 211 , France 148, Malta 137, Belgium 130, Israel 124, Netherlands 114, Lithuania 104, Italy 90, Georgia 80, Uk 54 for me all that countries don t deseved that points from juries deserved so many points lower.
@eurotwist
Seriously? all those millions voted for Sergey to win money because he was first in the odds?? Malta was overrated big time the song was nothing special. And being half naked whilst trying to win votes with sympathy did not help either. The only person who was robbed was Sergey lazarev. It’s very clear the juries pushed him down on purpose.
Oh, Andres. We (Croats) can so relate to having a delegation ruin a good singer with a good song. People here love dear Nina, but she received no support from our system. I hope she knows we love her no matter what.
@sonic0201: Almost agree!
I want justice for Hungary, Azerbaijan and Austria who finished five places below the televoting and for Russia who was the televoting’s winner. These are my crime for me!
Poland, Lithuania are overrated, to name a few.
I am sorry to say that Malta Ira losco won the semi final from the jury and lost the viewers votes all because Sergei was mentioned everytime he permormed in the rehersals that he did the best performance and obviously bettings where placed all on him, that is why he got all the viewers votes not because it was original but people wanted to win money. I am so disappointed that people vote for the highest bettings not for the song. Everyone could see how many times Russia was mentioned for his performance and Malta never in the jury’s performance.
You know i’m not a fan of say yay, but 22?????
She deserved more. Not much more XDD, but more. The juries were ok (16).
I’m from Spain and it’s about time we spaniards stop crying and blame everybody else for our pathetic results. It’s a shame that a country with so much talent and potential, throws away great songs with poor stagings that belong to 10 years ago. Even a little country like Lithuania made a fabulous staging from a mediocre song. 9th position and very well deserved. We have a serious problem inside our own spanish delegation. It’s called Federico Llano. This man is and old-fashioned, outdated and clueless boss for our delegation. He takes Eurovision as his holidays, making those stupid statements… Read more »
People are running a withdraw campaign in Spain
so sad about the results, barei deserved better
Main mess happened within Rus/Ukr votes. Mirror reflect in supporting Armenia/Azerbaijan. This year voting results became worst from published.
What I am really angry about is the fact that songs like The Netherlands, Czechia, Belgium and Italy were totally killed by the running order in Televoting. There has to be some kind of solution to that. I genuinely thought the Netherlands could win with his Charsima and quality song, but I’ll admit it, by the time we had to start to vote I already forgot him, which is such a pity, Belgium got just saved by the juries, but then again I thought that the juries would go after a quality SONG, in which case NL should’ve come much… Read more »
Of course Poland deserved 3rd place. Poland doesn’t have faithful neighbors to vote for it and 34 different countries put them in their top ten, they won their position fair and square. Now, how could the 3rd favorite of the public be rated 2nd to last from the juries is the real outrage here.
SPAIN STARTS TO BE TOO TIRED OF THIS UNFAIR EUROPEAN ATTITUDE TO OUR CANDIDATURES. WE ARE NOT ASKING FOR A FINAL WINNER RESULT IF WE DON’T DESERVE IT BUT THIS IS TOO MUCH. TWO YEARS 21st AND 22nd PLACE NOT DESERVED. WE DON’T WANT TO GIVE YOU ANYMORE THE BEST MOMENTS OF THE EUROVISION NIGHT AND TO COME BACK HOME WITH THIS SADNESS. SIMPLE AND EASY, WE START A CAMPAIGN TO WITHDRAWAL OF THIS CONTEST.
@Charles, @jowncarlo… You seems to have huge problem that Poli got up to 4th place.
@Charles – if this is the fans favorite, then its the best song. In fact some of us are in 21th century.
The biggest crime – 18th place for Serbia. Such a shame, Europe (the world, truly).
I am still in shock at Czech Republic’s flopping 🙁
The biggest crime for me was CR, Germany, Serbia, Spain and UK being so underrated by both the public and the juries while the likes of Lithuania, Poland and Azerbaijan got undeserved high placings. I don’t know what to think of the juries anymore. On one hand, they helped balance some very obvious and disproportionate diaspora votes; but then again you have jurors who don’t even bother to hide their corruption. Like the two swedish jurors who ranked Azerbaijan first, that wouldn’t have to do with Samra being literally the only non-swedish person involved with the song and performance, now… Read more »