Your daily Eurovision news round-up has landed. In the build up to the song contest kicking off in Liverpool this May, the team here at wiwibloggs is bringing you all the latest news from the world of Eurovision 2023.
In today’s Eurovision daily digest, The Busker film their postcard and Chris Harms from Lord of the Lost reacts to all the Eurovision 2023 entries. But first…
Eurovision 2023 news roundup: Tuesday 4 April
Voyager’s Simone unboxes a new guitar for Eurovision
Voyager are starting their pre-party tour in Madrid this weekend. But before the Australian band make their way over to Europe, guitarist Simone got a nice little surprise. She was gifted a brand new guitar to get her hands around for their performances at the pre-parties and at Eurovision in Liverpool.
Guitar unboxing for Simone. We can't wait to take this beauty to Madrid with us ?
— VOYAGER (@Voyagerau) April 4, 2023
Thank you Tosin Abasi @AnimalsAsLeader @ernieball @ConceptMusic for making my guitar dreams come true!#Eurovision #voyagerau #progmetal #femaleguitarist #7string #kaizenguitar #ernieball pic.twitter.com/caQyhua6fc
Lord of the Lost’s Chris Harms reacts to Eurovision 2023
Chris Harms will be hearing the Eurovision 2023 songs a lot whilst he’s in Liverpool. But we’ve been given the chance to watch the Lord of the Lost member listen to the entries for the very first time. Chris filmed his reaction whilst watching the semi-final one and two recap videos (including the auto qualifiers). He’s not afraid to say when a song didn’t resonate with him. But he also has some initial favourites – Estonia and Israel.
Malta’s The Busker shoot Eurovision postcard
We can expect buses and frisbees to appear in The Busker’s postcard. The trio have spent time at a few different locations in Malta for the shooting of their intro piece. In the behind the scenes video we get to see them jumping on board a retro bus that’s almost as colourful as Dav.Jr’s jumpers. They then head to the beach for a game of frisbee by the sea.
Next stop on our #Eurovision2023 BTS postcard tour, it's Malta! ??
— BBC Eurovision (@bbceurovision) April 4, 2023
We'd love it if The Busker turned up to Liverpool in that bus ? pic.twitter.com/vxh4VyGfRC
Cities across the UK to hold live Eurovision screenings
Liverpool may have been selected as the host city for Eurovision 2023, but other cities across the UK are still getting in on the action. Fans in Birmingham, Brighton, Cardiff, Darlington, Leeds, Manchester, Newcastle, Nottingham and Sheffield will be able to watch the grand final whilst surrounded by others from their local community at a live screening. Each city will reveal their schedule of events over the coming weeks.
The biggest music show on earth is coming to a city near you! ?
— BBC Eurovision (@bbceurovision) April 4, 2023
Birmingham, Brighton, Cardiff, Darlington, Leeds, Manchester, Newcastle, Nottingham and Sheffield will be holding official #Eurovision2023 screenings, get all the info here ? https://t.co/g4gOua2IkI pic.twitter.com/qq3F6qT7aY
More stars join the pre-party tour
There’s still a few pre-parties left and some more chances to see the class of Eurovision 2023 perform live ahead of May’s shows. The latest addition to the line-up for Eurovision In Concert is Armenia’s Brunette.
Who knows! Maybe Brunette finds het ‘Future Lover’ in Amsterdam! This year’s Armenian?? Eurovision hopeful is our 28th confirmed act!?
— EurovisionInConcert (@ESCinConcert) April 4, 2023
Final tickets: @Ticketmaster_NL
Info: https://t.co/dgCRTl3IxZ#EurovisioninConcert #EiC2023 #songfestival #eurovision #Amsterdam pic.twitter.com/JA0w7zb9Tr
Additional reporting by Oliver Adams.
Sometimes I remember that Belarus sent Galasy ZMesta with ‘Ya nauchu tebya’ and I just sit here in stunned silence.
“Mademoiselle Gaga” lol it made my day!
I loved his benevolent sincerity, many people and eurofans should take example on him, kindness is the key and it is not incompatible with sincerity, the proof here.
I like the comments from Chris Harms a lot. He is very respectful to every song he heard, even if he didn’t like a song. It was nice to see this video’s
Chris Harm seems like an supernice guy, and he is a treat for the eye as well – too bad he seems to be playing for the majority team. LOL! We would have had some discussions over his favorites though. Him being a rocker, but then quite the stereotypical eurovision song fan in the end. It is cute!
It’s all televote. Od course they’ll qualify
But they are #2, and Malta gets more points from juries these days. I don’t think they’re going to make it.
For the screenings, I wish more small towns and cities in the South that aren’t Brighton or the obvious, London, wouldn’t just be the ones with Eurovision interest. There ARE people elsewhere in between you know! It’s not just the midlands or the north! They often get overlooked with these events and actually have LOADS of people!
I get you! I think places such as Plymouth, Southampton, Bristol, Portsmouth or Norwich could get something
Yeah
Agreed. I’m also in a missed-out place. 🙂
I liked seeing Chris’s reactions. He seemed very honest but remained humble, admitting when he wasn’t into a song but not outright insulting it. I also kinda like how he said that just because the song they perform is in the genre leaning more into hard rock and metal, he still just listens to pop music like anyone else can.
Like An Animal also got a studio version!
who cares, no one cares about San Marino
we only care about Loreen, double eurovision champion (hope i’ve jinxed it now)
You forgot the “/s” I guess
Just found out about it and I’m glad it’s finally out!
I’m quite agree with him, unless with “Germany, 0 points”.
And I liked “Mademoiselle Gaga” 🙂
Chris Harms reacting to all the songs has made my day, thank you. He has also effectively done some of the Wiwi Jury work for us! 😀
Anyone know where William is?. Is he off promoting his book!
28 out of 37 so far!!! That will be a long night. But I believe in the dutch serving quality production.
Unboxing videos are weird, I never got the appeal.
Israel and Estonia being Chris Harms’ initial favorites is some questionable taste, to say the least…
I get most people don’t connect with Alika’s emotion during her song but to me, “Bridges” one of my favorite entries of the year, so I have to agree with Chris here.
I’m 100% with Chris on that. I connected immediately with “Bridges”. Never connected with “Due Vite” although it sounds like a well written song. Interesting.
I would rather see it as an insight to what juries will like 😉
So the juries should support songs that sound like ESC by-numbers then? I don’t think that mentality is good for the contest at all.
The juries do support songs with good vocals and which are well written and produced. The reason they were reintroduced was to eliminate novelty and joke entries that flooded the contest in the 00s, along with all the typical average ethnic dance numbers. They are not looking for what’s outside-the-box – that was never the purpose if you haven’t noticed. If it’s a well written and sung ballad/pop/mainstream song they will vote for it and it’s always been simple as that.
I never said that juries are perfect and I want to remind you all the mess with last year’s second semi. Also many jury members are not music professionals which defeats the initial purpose. Australia, Switzerland and Azerbaijan 2022 were all very well sung (both Australia and Azerbaijan were among my personal qualifiers in second semi last year) and Norway was well produced and apparently had a deeper (Covid vaccination related) meaning hidden in the lyrics. Nothing alike Pirates of the Sea and Dustin the Turkey…
Pirates of the Sea finished 12th and LT United 6th. Countries like Azerbaijan or Turkey finished in Top 10 multiple times in the 00s including awful songs like Day after day and Shake it up shekerim. No, I don’t want any of those back and no I don’t think that televoters ‘know better’. As I said above the juries are not perfect and the main issue has been that are prone to corruption but the solution is not to eliminate them altogether but improve them. I have suggested multiple times that a mixed system with demoscopic national juries and a… Read more »
No worries. I just strongly disagree that ‘only televoting’ can give the best results and the history of the contest is the best proof. Having watched ESC in 3 different decades with only juries in the 90s, only televoting in the 00s and the 50/50 system after 2009, I’m confident to say that the last decade has provided the best and most diverse winners out of the 3 systems. Countries like Austria, Portugal and Netherlands had literally given up with the ‘only televoting’ system since everyone knew that most of the spots in the top 10 were already predetermined to… Read more »
He was just polite with everyone but he didn’t avoid saying what he likes and what he doesn’t. Very nice videos and I like that his reactions are based on how the songs make him connect with them or not.
He was only listening to snippets, though, so his thoughts don’t count for much until he hears the whole thing.
That is also true, but he paid quite a lot of attention, enough to analyse (at least his first impression of) vocals/lyrics/music arrangement and style for such a short snippet of each song. This is quite different from casual listening and I don’t expect his opinions to change drastically after listening to the whole product.