Eurovision final

Husband is home from Michigan! So glad. He went to a medievalist conference and got a lot out of it, but we're all definitely glad he's back. His flights were even all on time, which is probably a first. Tonight we watched the Eurovision final, which I know was Saturday, but it's definitely more fun to watch together. Wow, this year just had a lot of really good songs. There is always political voting (the former USSR and the former Yugoslavia vote for all their former compatriots, for example--you can't vote for your own country), so a few years ago they added a jury, which contributes 50% of the votes. The quality has really gone up since then. Still, there are countries who have very nice entries but still don't do well because they don't have buddies--like doggedly neutral Switzerland. Really liked their entry, but yeah, they sort of fell out of the voting early. Overall, though, so many good entries, so varied, and so many performers who looked like they were truly enjoying what they were doing, which makes it fun to watch.

Anyway--Azerbaijan won with a lovely entry. Looks like we're going to need to study some geography for that part of the world, as they'll be hosting next year. Finland was down at the bottom :( but I still loved their simple entry. My other top choices were Denmark and the UK. I liked France, too, although the live performance wasn't as good as his recording. And--urk, can I even say this? Ireland had a strong performance. Um, but I sort of wanted to send energy vibes to the mother of the twin performers. Hyper much? Anyway, for those interested, here are some of the songs.

Azerbaijan:

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Hm, looks like LJ won't let me embed more than one video. Here are links to Finland, Denmark (song starts at :43), and the UK.