2018 was my first Eurovision! Backstory on how I got into Eurovision: I was first exposed to Eurovision back in February 2018 when a Turkish friend of mine in an online group call played maNga's "We Could Be The Same" on his phone. It got my attention and he explained Eurovision to me and everyone else in the call. That, plus Geography Now's video on Eurovision got my curiosity. I wasn't too into it like now, but I was curious to check it out. I decided to watch the 2018 contest (it was just the grand final since the US only broadcasted it on Logo TV) with my Turkish friend on the call. I haven't heard the songs that were released before the show since I didn't know at the time that they release the songs before the shows, so seeing them on TV was the first time I saw them. My favorites that year were Lithuania, Denmark, and Ireland. I wasn't into Israel's or even Cyprus' songs at the time since they weren't for me, but they did eventually grew on me. Ever since then, I was getting interested into Eurovision and how it works from national finals from each country to the semi-finals of each year. I was also listening to the non-qualifiers of 2018 as well. 2019 was my first time experiencing Eurovision as a fan, although I was still getting use to how everything works. It was also my first Eurovision since starting my channel. So that's my backstory on how I got into Eurovision. BTW, your 34th is my winner and your 42nd is my last.
My top 43: 10/10: 1. Mall 🇦🇱 2. Mercy 🇫🇷 3. Non mi avete fatto niente 🇮🇹 4. Viszlát nyár 🇭🇺 5. Lie to Me 🇨🇿 6. Toy 🇮🇱 9/10: 7. Together 🇮🇪 8. Nobody but You 🇦🇹 9. Stones 🇨🇭 10. Under the Ladder 🇺🇦 11. A Matter of Time 🇧🇪 8/10: 12. Oniro mou 🇬🇷 13. For You 🇬🇪 14. Hvala, ne! 🇸🇮 7/10: 15. Outlaw in 'Em 🇳🇱 16. O jardim 🇵🇹 17. Nova deca 🇷🇸 18. Goodbye 🇷🇴 6/10: 19. Qami 🇦🇲 20. Bones 🇧🇬 21. Dance You Off 🇸🇪 22. You Let Me Walk Alone 🇩🇪 23. My Lucky Day 🇲🇩 24. Fuego 🇨🇾 25. That's How You Write a Song 🇳🇴 26. Funny Girl 🇱🇻 27. Higher Ground 🇩🇰 28. Tu canción 🇪🇸 29. Lost and Found 🇲🇰 5/10: 30. When We're Old 🇱🇹 31. La forza 🇪🇪 32. Storm 🇬🇧 4/10: 33. X My Heart 🇦🇿 34. Monsters 🇫🇮 35. Who We Are 🇸🇲 36. Crazy 🇭🇷 3/10: 37. Inje 🇲🇪 38. Light Me Up 🇵🇱 39. I Won't Break 🇷🇺 40. Taboo 🇲🇹 2/10: 41. Our Choice 🇮🇸 1/10: 42. We Got Love 🇦🇺 43. Forever 🇧🇾
Hahah I love the ”I’m sure he’s nice…”-comment on the Swedish guy. Because he is actually known within Swedish media business to be one of (if not THE) the friendliest celeb in all of Sweden. I love him for that. Seems like someone anyone could hang out with and enjoy the time. ”Dance you off” tho? Not entirely my style. He’s done better work since then (in Swedish). Anyway, I do love 2018 actually. After 2016, I find it to be the strongest of the 2010s. Seems like lots of countries brought their A-game, unlike 2011-2015 where almost everyone seemed so extremely disinterested, even the performer. My favorites are many, but the clearest are Estonia, Lithuania and France. So, we don’t have too much in common here. Even if I agree that Switzerland was severely underrated.
I love hosts of that evening but songs were pretty weak. My country in your top is last so it is underrated. Lukas didn't sing well but song is nice...
I have some strongly mixed feelings about 2018. Thanks to Sobral's win the previous year, we get a slight return of native languages and diverse sounds, which resulted in a pretty solid year song-wise. Portugal got to show its culture through the interval acts and postcards, and it was nice to see them embrace the Eurovision spirit. However, the negative part came through the results, which you can see with my top ten. I honestly can't be objective with this year. (As for Fuego and its "legendary" status, I'm not 100% sure about it either. Maybe it was how it was improved by the staging, and it gave some Eurofans their kick in terms of ethno-bops from the mid-2000s. Eleni has some serious energy on stage, which manages to elevate Fuego from just another "dated bop". While a good song, it doesn't hold a candle against their 1990s entries, like Sti Fotia and Mana Mou) My top ten (honorable mentions go to ARM, PRT, AUT, HUN, MLD...): 1 pt: LAT (the one Baltic entry I sincerely liked that year gets eliminated in the SF. Ugh.) 2 pt: SUI (they really did everything right in the SF! Probably the one that should've made the final the most, but who would you replace them with?) 3 pt: SLO 4 pt: ALB 5 pt: UKR (In defense of Under the Ladder, I thought it was really dramatic piece with both power and motivation. I think the lyrics talk about getting up from difficulties and facing them. Definitely one of my favorites from Ukraine, and I followed up with Melovin's discography afterwards) 6 pt: ISR (Good to see someone else think Netta is a deserved winner!) 7 pt: FRA (I actually like Mercy! It has good lyrics and I think Madame Monsieur has a good flow to it with the melody. Though I agree with you on how the staging was a bit too bland.) 8 pt: BEL -- 2018 had a number of songs getting stifled by staging, and A Matter of Time was one of them. After it was released, it was so dark and sophisticated, I believed that if they got a staging to match, it could win. Unfortunately, that didn't happen; while the opening and ending shots were intriguing, the rest of the performance made Sennek look dead. Still one of the best (if not the best) from the Flemish side of Belgium. 10 pt: ITA -- Non mi avete fatto niente is a rousing anthem, and handles the "peace" theme better than France did, but just slightly. Whereas Mercy focuses on a specific story, Non mi avete fatto niente takes recent history and sums it up fantastically with hard hitting lyrics and the contrasting voices. The staging also worked well to their advantage--it was bare, but the subtitles got their message across. And that performance really moved me. Probably my favorite post-comeback entry from Italy. 12 pt: GRE -- Yes, that staging was low energy and didn't convey the meaning of the song. So why is Oniro Mou still my winner, after all this? Because it's a spiritual experience, from beginning to end, with a pretty good mix of ethno music and modern production. The lyrics are also really thoughtful and deep--the interaction between the verses and chorus are quite clever. And it's just so beautiful and reminds me of the sea. If we're talking about studio cuts only, this would be my favorite Eurovision song ever. (Also my favorite Greek entry, with Pia Prosefhi really close behind).
So again not a great year for results given all the non-qualifiers in our Top 10s! My entire top 4 were NQs this time. In Semi 1, my two lowest ranked qualifiers are Czech Republic and Cyprus, which obviously would be quite difficult to just "swap out" with Switzerland and Croatia. I also wouldn't mind if Lithuania hadn't made it. In Semi 2, to get Georgia and Latvia in there, I would happily replace them with the bare qualifiers, Serbia and Hungary in 9th and 10th, or in fact even happier replacing them with the Top 2, Norway and Sweden.
My personal Top 10: My first place 🥇 and Winner: Hungary 🇭🇺 My second place 🥈: Moldova 🇲🇩 My third place 🥉: Belarus 🇧🇾 My 4th: Estonia 🇪🇪 5th: Sweden 🇸🇪 6th: Czechia 🇨🇿 7th: Greece 🇬🇷 8th: Cyprus 🇨🇾 9th: Switzerland 🇨🇭 10th: Norway 🇳🇴
I disagree that this year was mediocre, but all of "dark trio" are in my top 15 (1st🇧🇪 2nd🇱🇻 11th🇭🇷) and both Israel and Cyprus are my non qualifiers 💀
You seem to have my same taste! My top 15: 1 Latvia ❤ (FINALLY I'VE FOUND SOMEONE WHO LIKES IT LIKE I DO) 2 Belgium (A masterpiece; sadly the live was not very good) 3 Austria (One of the most powerful songs I've ever listened to) 4 Slovenia 5 France 6 Belarus 7 Croatia 8 Macedonia 9 Spain 10 Netherlands 11 Portugal 12 Norway (I know it's kinda childish, but It's soo enjoyable) 13 Georgia 14 Bulgaria 15 Sweden
Another great top! Out of interest though, considering how close to the end you are now, what are you planning for Sundays once you’ve done all the years?
So I mentioned the possibility of doing rankings of each country's entries a while back, but I'm not going to do that just yet because: 1. Those videos would just be really similar to the ones I've already made so won't be too interesting. 2. I wouldn't be able to make all of them before the 2022 contest comes out, and having some of the videos go up to 2021 and some up to 2022 would irritate me. I would like to make those videos at some point, but I think that point is after the 2022 contest. In the meantime, I want to have Sundays as a time to make a variety of different videos. Closing off the year rankings I want to make a video for all my winners 1956-2021 (including a couple which have changed even since I made the 1 year update video), and also a video ranking all of the years from 1956-2021 based on how much I like the songs. Beyond that, I have a few ideas for various opinion related videos, and a couple of other Clarinet Moon-style stats ones I'm excited about. Most of these videos will take longer to make than the personal tops so I'd probably need to take two Sundays to make the video, so you'd see videos every Wednesday, plus a video every other Sunday for a while.
I personally find 2018 to be a pretty great year, cause I find that there's a lot of variety here and I enjoy most of the songs. Having a contest without LED was very interesting, and made it so a lot of countries had to come up with creative stagings around those limitations. I'm not sure how to feel about the hosts. Two of them were good, while the other two just kinda annoyed me personally. It was a while since I last made a Top for this contest, so I just now made up a new Top 5 to use here. Below is my Top 5 1. Italy 🇮🇹 2. Estonia 🇪🇪 3. Bulgaria 🇧🇬 4. Hungary 🇭🇺 5. Israel 🇮🇱
Woah, you could tell the difference between the hosts? I had no idea who any of them were and I never got to the point where I could actually tell them apart.
@@eurovisionconnor Fair enough, and I can personally say that I don't remember any of their names. I just found that some of them did a much better job than the others.
Quite a fine year in my opinion. A slight improvement on 2017 but still not worthy of "great." I'm actually quite glad that Romania, Russia, and Azerbaijan all lost their qualification streaks since all 3 of them (notably Azerbaijan) qualified when they really shouldn't have. There were some pretty funky results to be shoe-horned in as well like how Sweden finished higher than Estonia. Speaking of Sweden, this is the final year of Sweden being horribly overrated. I don't have anything new to say about the hosts, Filomena was the only good one, but that stage, my goodness, it was horrible. I get that LEDs are hard to program and Portugal didn't really have the funds for them, but at this point in time they had almost become a necessity. Oh and also my predictions... um, I would rather not talk about them 43. Norway (literally the spawn of satan in song form) 42. Iceland (weirdly charming?) 41. Hungary (I don't like rock, rest in piece btw) 40. The Netherlands (still don't like rock) 39. Georgia 38. San Marino (don't like rap) 37. Russia 36. Sweden (annoying) 35. Czech Republic (annoying) 34. Poland (annoying) 33. Montenegro 32. Croatia 31. Malta 30. Armenia 29. North Macedonia 28. Spain 27. Belarus (very strange staging) 26. Australia 25. Belgium (REALLY not as good as people say) 24. Italy 23. Ukraine (cool staging!) 22. Greece 21. Portugal 20. Romania 19. Austria 18. Latvia (almost sounds like a song from a musical) 17. Germany (part of me thinks it's boring) 16. Serbia 15. Denmark 14. Slovenia (always forget about this one) 13. Bulgaria 12. United Kingdom (I do agree about the final minute) 11. Cyprus (I may or may not have rearranged my list so this wasn't in the top 10) 10. Switzerland 9. Albania (maybe I do like rock?) 8. Moldova 7. Azerbaijan (can't decide if this was robbed or not) 6. Lithuania 5. France 4. Israel (unexpected but still deserved winner) 3. Ireland 2. Estonia (would have been a better winner imo) 1. Finland In 2019, I think North Macedonia will be your winner and Finland will be your last
Australia is my nr. 1. We Got Love has a special place in my heart. Loved the happy feeling of it, and I actually liked Jessica's live performance. And yes, I always get happy when I see other fans thinking Israel deserved to win. I thought Toy was a cool song and Netta performed it well. Considering how it was the pre-contest favorite to win all the way, I'm surprised to see it being a so unpopular winner.
I agree with you about the strength of the year. Many seem to name it as their favourite but I really don't have as strong feelings for my favourite songs as I do with other years- the overall standard is pretty good though. Same last place but you have my favourites pretty low, I love to see appreciation for Georgia which was my pre-show winner however.
Here are my personal votes/rankings, i'am from the Netherlands 12 points: France - Madame Monsieur - Mercy 10 points: Austria - Cesar Sampson - Nobody but you 8 points: Germany - Michael Schulte - You let me walk alone 7 points: Italy - Ermal Meta & Fabrizio Moro - Non mi avete fatto niente 6 points: Lithuania - Ieva Zasimauskaite - When we're old 5 points: Australia - Jessica Mauboy - We got love 4 points: Ukraine - Mélovin - Under the ladder 3 points: Hungary - AWS - Viszlát Nyár 2 points: Cyprus - Eleni Foureira - Fuego 1 point : Sweden - Benjamin Ingrosso - Dance you off
Connor spitting nothing but facts once again (except for Germany, they deserved higher, but if you say you don't feel the emotions it's of course ok 😁)
Songs are very strong in this year, I like most of them, however, I wasn't the most happiest about the results. Well, you'll see in the list, here it is! 43. Israel 42. Russia 41. Estonia 40. Iceland 39. Malta 38. Spain 37. Croatia 36. Latvia 35. Slovenia 34. United Kingdom 33. Czech Republic 32. Australia 31. Belarus 30. Sweden 29. Greece 28. Switzerland 27. Belgium 26. Germany 25. Denmark 24. San Marino 23. Cyprus 22. Montenegro 21. Azerbaijan 20. Norway 19. Finland 18. Romania 17. Armenia 16. Portugal 15. Ukraine 14. Ireland 13. Lithuania 12. France 11. Bulgaria 10. Poland 9. North Macedonia 8. Hungary 7. Austria 6. The Netherlands 5. Georgia 4. Italy 3. Serbia 2. Moldova 1. Albania
My winner was Germany. Should've been higher than Toy and Fuego, I hate toy and Fuego. And also RIP Örs Siklosi (Hungary). And agree, x my heart is worst entry of my own country. But it is not THAT bad.
