By Kevin Sherwin
Romania has failed to qualify to the Grand Final of Eurovision 2021. Singer Roxen will not be live on stage on Saturday night and that now means Romania have missed out on a place in the Final for the last 3 contests.
Her Semi- Final wasn’t without drama, during the Jury Semi- Final on Monday night Roxen suffered an ear piece problem which made her unable to hear the backing track properly and her performance was a disaster. In floods of tears she pleaded with the organisers to repeat her performance again, which they granted. She wiped her tears away & performed for a second time.
During the live show which was watched by over 200 million viewers she put on a good performance but sadly Europe didn’t agree. Only 10 countries qualified which means there were 6 disappointed artists whose Eurovision journey came to an end.
Australia who have always qualified to the Grand Final since their participation in 2015 also missed out on promotion. Despite the fact the world is recovering from Covid it was nice to see 38 countries actually managing to perform live in Rotterdam, it was only Australia that couldn’t travel because of a Covid travel ban and you wonder if that made a difference when it came to the voting as her performance was on tape which took away the Live aspect.
Also losing out on a Grand Final place was Ireland who let’s not forget have won the contest the most, a massive 7 times. When our hosts came on to announce the immortal words “Let the Eurovision Song Contest begin”, the 3500 members of the audience plus the millions watching on TV breathed a sigh of relief that after 105 weeks Eurovision was back and oh how we missed it.
Normally there would have been 15,000 ecstatic fans in the audience singing, dancing and flag waving but with Covid restrictions only 3500 were allowed to enter the arena and everyone of them had to have a negative Covid PCR test taken less than 24 hours before the event.
They were allowed to remove their masks during the show and only had to wear them if they needed a toilet break
It was no surprise that most of the pre contest favourites qualified – Ukraine, Lithuania, Malta and Azerbaijan. They were very popular in the arena as was Norway. Also joining them in Saturdays Final are Sweden, Cyprus,Belgium & Russia. Making up the final 10 was Israel who must have been under so much pressure as the world would have been watching taking into account what’s happening between Israel and Palestine at the moment. Every year I seem to have to write the words “Don’t bring politics into Eurovision”.
We now move onto Semi-Final 2 which features Bulgaria, Switzerland, Moldova & San Marino who have confirmed that American Rapper Flo Rida will join Senhit on stage to perform the song “Adrenaline” Eurovision is no stranger to having superstars perform at the live shows, in 2013 we had Justin Timberlake perform at the Final and of course in 2019 Madonna was invited to sing which must have seemed a good idea at the time but her performance was slated by just about everyone. Having sold over 80 Million records worldwide Flo Rida, or Tramar lacel Dillard to give him his real name, San Marino must have thought it was Christmas when they asked him to duet on stage with Senhit and he actually agreed straight away.
The press kept asking all week if Flo Rida would be here and the official line was “let’s see”.
Apparently they had special permission from the organisers to use a stand- in during the first and second rehearsals but were told that he had to be present at the Wednesday afternoon dress rehearsal.
Already qualified for the Grand Final are the “Big 5”, so called because they pay the most money to the European Broadcasting Union who organise the event, & with that benefit they always get a free passage to the Grand Final, they are France, Germany, Italy, Spain & the United Kingdom.
The final country making up the 26 on Saturday will be the host nation The Netherlands.
So now the so called “experts” are predicting it’s between France, Switzerland or Italy who will win Saturday’s Final, but I think with all the hype of Flo Rida and San Marino we might have a Eurovision winner that can’t actually stage it in their own country, as I’m not sure they have anywhere suitable to stage it. San Marino might ask their Neighbours if they can borrow Italy next May so we could all be heading to Rome 2022. So after 24 months of waiting and praying we will have a new Eurovision champion on Saturday night.