Friday, February 24, 2012

It's Time To Talk About Ireland

As an Irish Eurovision Blogger of course I have to cast the rather good Austrian selection to the side and favour the country that matters the most to my heart. Ireland this year have a national final that offers two returning Eurovision artists in the from of Jedward and Donna McCaul. We also have a rather strong national final line up by all accounts. At the start of the national final season I had expected the poorest national final imaginable to ensure a Jedward win.

It is time to examine exactly what Ireland needs to do and what is happening with our national final.

Tomorrow night The Late Late Show takes place at 9:35GMT/10:35CET so if your not on GMT you can look forward to a late night for this. I am looking forward to being able to finally watch a national final on the television. If your not in Ireland you should be able to watch it on the RTÉ Player.

So we have 5 songs my full review is here. Too sum it up here we go:

Maria McCool - VERY Traditional song, good vocals. Won't widely appeal. The people who like this music are too conservative to vote I do like it but not as a Eurovision song.
Grade: C-
Jury Prediction: 4th
Public Vote: 5th
Overall: 5th

Donna McCaul - Modern enough song, seems popular with a good number of Eurovision fans. Personally it is good but not amazing, it seems to lack a small amount of fluidity. I'm a little unsure if it will be as good live.

Grade: B
Jury Prediction: Either two points ahead of rest or well behind leader.
Public Vote: 2nd
Overall: 2nd

Andrew Mann - Slow rock is hardly going to be to the taste of the two major groups who will be watching the Late Late - Jedward fans and the arch-Conservative elderly Irish who always watch the show.

Grade: D
Jury Prediction: 3rd
Public Vote: 4th
Overall: 3rd

Una Gibney and David Shannon - This song has been a guilty pleasure of mine. However I think it more than likely won't challenge for votes. It is just a little cheesy and then some.

Grade: B+ [Because I do really like it for it's cheesiness]
Jury Prediction: 5th
Public Vote: 3rd
Overall: 4th


Jedward - Ok the bit that you've been waiting for: by far and away the big ticket item in Ireland has been Jedward returning to Eurovision. It probably has generated more interest in the Irish national final than normal and this may not be a bad thing. The bottom line here is that as the hot favorites to win the question is not are they going to win but how could they not win? Really I cannot see them losing the televote. The massive number of Jedward fans out there going to vote them through. The biggest block in their path is the juries but in reality Jedward  would need to be completely rejected by the juries not to win. However I think the juries will respect their 8th place finish last year and their international recognition and while they may not completely back them they will give them 10 points which would allow them to progress.


Grade: A
Jury Prediction: Leading by either two points or winning all juries
Public Vote: 1st
Overall: 1st

So really it boils down to will Jedward scrap through with two/four points or will they win across the board.
I know there will be many Eurovision fans telling me that Donna would be a far better choice but remember that Jedward fans account for a sizeable share of our readers.

It still is up to Jedward fans to ensure Jedward get a couple of votes on the televote so for get out their and
VOTE FOR JEDWARD!

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