We watched the final and parts of semi final again this year. My favourite is the “Rändajad” from Estonia:
The main singer looks so amazingly beautiful. Exactly THE beauty in my imagination: black straight hair, blue eyes and fair skin. It’s so surreal, she looks like a fairy! If I’m having a baby girl, I wish she could have her look when she grows up. 
The song was not so cliche and her vocal performance in the final was way better than in the semi final. At the first I was a bit worried about her since her voice did not sound the best during the semi final, I thought it would be perfect if she could have Sasha Lazard’s voice for that song. But I was astonished that her voice got so much cleaner and focused at final. It’s “thicker” than Sasha’s voice, nevertheless very clean and has a power of putting through. It was hard to expect such a quiet and atmospheric song would be the final winner, but the Urban Symphony (name of the band) from Estonia really deserves a better place. At the very least, it should be in front of the songs from Iceland and Turkey.
My second favourite song is “Jan Jan” from Armenia, which is Dirk’s favourite this time:
First of all, the singers deserve to be called vocalists. They are obviously trained singer, and there was no fault we could pick their vocal performance. ( The young singer from UK, for example, has an amazing raw voice with great potential, but lacks a bit training on singing for now. For some high pitches, especially in the sentence “It’s my time”, her vocal chord struggled really hard and the “i” in the “time” didn’t sound even okay in my ears. ) Beside the excellent vocal performance, the song has a strong regional character, the rhythm and melody are catchy. And they danced really well. The German commenter felt it exotic, but it was quite familiar to me. Since songs and dances from Xing Jiang, somewhere in west China, have very similar rhythm and melody. Even the costume of the Armenia girls looked very Xing Jiang.
This time a young boy from Norway got the first place. Congratulations. Many said the young man’s cute, but I have another imagination of “cute man” (I like Takeshi Kaneshiro for that matter). The commenter said he’s musically a “wonder child”, I guess maybe on violin playing, dancing, music composition or something else, but IMHO definitely not on singing. No matter how hard he would try, he would not likely to become a great singer. The young singer from UK has the potential in her voice but this boy not. But that does not mean he couldn’t become a mega star. Many big pop stars do not have the best vocal cord. And those who have perfect vocal cord and worked hard on singing just failed to become a mega star for one reason or another.
The song from Germany is a big surprise to us this time. It is sooooooo much better than Germany’s songs of last two years. Both of us like it very, very much. It is my third favourite. Quality male voice for a song like this ( waaaay better than the voice from Norway for its folk song.). Perfect stage arrangement. There’s every element to drive up the party atomosphere: the dance, the firework, the sexy women. The final place is a big disappointment.
Both of us cannot understand why the song from Iceland got the second place. The song was a standard love song, the singer performed it in the standard pop-star way. The singer looked beautiful but there are more beautiful singers in the contest (The female singers from Estonia or Azerbaijan, for example). Her voice is even more plain than the boy from Norway. The dress also looked plain. If we talk about the on-stage emotionality, then the French mega star and the Russian singer were worlds better. Well, people’s tastes are different. 
Many countries from east Europe sent in songs that sound and look like from Las Vegas. I was really impressed by the performance of the lady from Ukraine, but the song sounded like from a Janet Jackson album. American pop culture still rules in Europe!
